Was Russia whistleblower killed with poison soup?
Key witness in £150m tax fraud may have been fed toxic plant
‘Substituted for sorrel’
A RUSSIAN whistleblower who died while jogging near his £3million Surrey mansion may have been murdered with a poisonous plant that was slipped into his soup, a court heard yesterday.
Alexander Perepilichnyy, 44, died in mysterious circumstances after seeking refuge in Britain because he was a key witness in a £150million tax fraud investigation involving corrupt senior Russian officials.
The businessman was thought to have had sorrel soup for lunch with his family just hours before he collapsed near his home on the gated St George’s Hill estate in Weybridge on November 10, 2012.
But tests carried out at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, South-West London, on a small amount of material from his stomach lining found a suspect compound. This matched the atomic weight of a rare and deadly vegetable poison, which could have been switched for the herb sorrel in the soup.
Experts identified a substance matching an extremely poisonous species of gelsemium, a toxic yellow- flowered plant known as heartbreak grass.
Just a few drops in the bloodstream can trigger cardiac arrest, making it appear that the victim has suffered a heart attack.
Yesterday in a pre-inquest review at the Old Bailey, lawyers claimed that police ‘flushed away’ key evidence and missed threats from an organised crime group.
When Mr Perepilichnyy was found dead, there was speculation over a KGB-style hit because he had been helping Swiss prosecutors in a money-laundering case involving fraudsters with links to the Kremlin. The money was stolen from taxes paid by investment company Hermitage Capital to the Russian treasury. Mr Perepilichnyy had also provided evidence against those linked to the death of anti- Poisoned: Alexander Litvinenko corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in a Moscow prison in 2009.
Legal and General, which provided a substantial life insurance policy for Mr Perepilichnyy shortly before his death, believes he may have been murdered, possibly by agents of the Russian state.
But after a long investigation, Surrey Police found no evidence anyone else was involved in the death and suggested he may have died of a heart attack. Yesterday Bob Moxon Browne QC, representing Legal and General, said: ‘If he was murdered, it does seem very likely he was poisoned as opposed to any other method of bringing about his death.
‘The rumour was he had a soup consisting of a rather large quantity of sorrel, which is a component of a popular Russian soup.’
Police ‘ flushed away’ Mr Perepilichnyy’s stomach contents very shortly after his death, which means further tests are impossible. But Mr Moxon Browne said the fact that no sorrel was found in his stomach lining could indi- cate foul play. Joking that he was donning his ‘Miss Marple hat’, the lawyer said: ‘There is a possibility someone substituted another vegetable material for sorrel.’
The theory has echoes of the murder of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, who was poisoned when the radioactive material polonium-210 was slipped into his teapot at London’s Millennium Hotel in 2006.
It has already been claimed that Mr Perepilichnyy was on an underworld ‘hitlist’ and could have been the victim of a ‘reprisal killing’ linked to the death of Mr Litvinenko, thought to have been killed on the orders of Russian president Vladimir Putin.
Yesterday Mr Moxon Browne indicated there was telephone evidence ‘about threats from an organised crime group’, but he said police only analysed one of Mr Perepilichnyy’s two phones.
But Fiona Barton QC, representing Surrey Police, said there was no proof a poison played any part in Mr Perepilichnyy’s death despite two autopsies. She said: ‘No identifiable toxin was found and that remains the case.’
The inquest has been hit by a string of delays. Last November Home Secretary Amber Rudd won a High Court order preventing the disclosure of ‘ sensitive material’ at the inquest. Intelligence gathered by MI5 about Valid Lurakhmaev, a Chechen assassin linked to the businessman’s death, will be kept secret because it could harm national security.
Yesterday the coroner in the case, the Recorder of London Nicholas Hilliard QC, said he has reviewed the secret material, but it did not materially assist him in answering the question of how Mr Perepilichnyy died. The full inquest is due to take place on June 5.