Tell us if Russian was spy, lawyer demands

A RUSSIAN millionaire could have been killed for being a British spy, an inquest has heard.

Alexander Perepilichnyy, 44, collapsed and died while jogging near his Surrey mansion in 2012 amid allegations that he had been poisoned.

He had been helping Ukbased campaigner Bill Browder’s Hermitage Capital Investment to expose a $230million (£142million in November 2012) moneylaundering operation with alleged links to the Kremlin.

Lawyers for Legal & General, his life insurers, demanded Nicholas Hilliard QC, the coroner, reveal whether Perepilichnyy was involved with intelligence services in the UK at the time of his death, after the Government said it could “neither confirm nor deny” speculation. Bob Moxon Browne QC, for Legal & General, was responding to a government bid for sensitive information relating to the Home Secretary’s review into 14 deaths in Britain allegedly linked to Russia to be kept secret.

If he had been a spy, it would be “very powerful evidence indeed that he might have been in special danger”, said Mr Moxon Browne. The coroner will make a ruling at a later date.