Britain accused of cover-up in death of Russian whistleblower
Officials in US and France said to be concerned that UK authorities failed to conduct proper inquiry
BRITISH authorities were last night accused of covering up the death of a Russian whistleblower who was found collapsed close to his Surrey home in 2012 in mysterious circumstances.
Surrey police and the family of Alex- ander Perepilichnyy, 44, believe that the Russian, who moved to the UK in 2009, died of a heart attack.
Now an investigation by Buzzfeed News has found that authorities in the US and France are increasingly concerned that their British counterparts have failed to investigate his death properly. “We strongly believe that Perepilichny was assassinated on direct orders from Putin or people close to him,” said a senior US intelligence official, speaking to the website.
Mr Perepilichnyy had fled Moscow after lifting the lid on a $230 million tax fraud by corrupt Russian government officials, passing the information on to Swiss prosecutors.
The case was connected to that of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who was found dead in prison after uncovering the fraud. Mr Perepilichnyy had originally assisted in the fraud, but after Mr Magnitsky’s death he turned on his mafia paymasters.
A Ukrainian woman, Elmira Medynska, now 27, who spent the last two nights of Mr Perepilichnyy’s life with him at the Hotel Bristol in Paris, was tracked down and interviewed.
Miss Medynska, who describes herself as a fashion designer and lives in a penthouse on the Avenue Victor Hugo in Paris, said she had never spoken to any investigators. The British had emailed her, but did not follow up when she provided her contact details, she said. The French were stymied by the lack of action from the British.
Records show that the pair stayed at the hotel for two nights, ordering the hotel’s “romance pack,” and checked out on November 10, with Mr Perepilichnyy getting the Eurostar back to London. It was later that same day that Mr Perepilichnyy died, collapsing while out on a run near his house.
Miss Medynska told the website that she had no idea Mr Perepilichnyy was married with an eight-year-old daughter, nor did she know about his whistleblowing. She said the news reached her in an email from Mr Perepilichnyy’s wife, Tatiana, who called her “bad words”. When Miss Medynska Googled him and read about his background, she said she was not surprised that he had died. “It happens to Russian people in London,” she said.
“He gave Russian information to Swiss and you can be killed for that.”
Despite Surrey police ruling that there were no suspicious circumstances and saying that toxicology reports came back negative, a pre-inquest hearing, with fresh tests demanded by his life insurance company, heard that traces of a rare and deadly plant poison, Gelsemium elegans, were discovered in his stomach.
The poison has been used in the past by Russian and Chinese assassins.
Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, invoked national security powers to withhold evidence from the inquest into his cause of death. The inquest began last week, and is continuing.
A former Scotland Yard commander said the police position was “very worrying”. At the inquest last week, the most senior officer at the scene of Mr Perepilichnyy’s death, who has since retired, contradicted the official police line and said he now believes “the death is suspicious”.
And Chris Phillips, the former head of Britain’s National Counter Terrorism Security Office, told Buzzfeed that he had no doubts it was an assassination.
Surrey police did not respond to a request for comment last night. The CIA said it had no comment on the report.