They include Trinny’s ex and a GCHQ spook. All these men died in Britain mysteriously. Chillingly, America believes the Russians are to blame
THE AMERICANS see Britain as the ‘crucible’ of assassinations carried out by Russian hitmen. That’s the claim made by news website BuzzFeed after a two-year investigation into suspicious deaths in this country. Yesterday, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson announced he was ‘studying’ the website’s dossier of deaths the U.S. believes were linked to Russia. Such is the so-called ‘wilderness of mirrors’ around espionage that it’s impossible to prove or disprove such murky claims. So could Moscow really have had a hand in these deaths?
1. BRITISH PROPERTY WHEELER-DEALER
A PROPERTY developer with everything to live for, Scot Young died an agonising death. He was found impaled on railings four floors below his luxury flat in an elegant Central london square one cold December night in 2014.
A playboy with a penchant for parties and cocaine, Young, who grew up on a Dundee housing estate, became a close friend of Boris Berezovsky — a former ally of President Vladimir Putin granted asylum here in 2003 — after the oligarch turned up unannounced and offered to buy his Surrey mansion.
U.S. intelligence files later revealed that Young, who was 52 when he died, had made numerous trips to Russia on behalf of Berezovsky, where he had been involved in money-laundering activities, and had been placed under surveillance by Russian spies.
Young was known to have contact with Russian underworld figures, many of whom act in tandem with Russian intelligence.
Neither his family nor, apparently, U.S. intelligence believe his death was suicide. Indeed, his ex-wife believes billions have since been siphoned out of his private accounts by his killers. He is also one of a circle of business associates or friends who would all die in disturbing circumstances.
2. PRESIDENT PUTIN’S EXILED ENEMY
BORIS BEREZOVSKY, Scot Young’s business partner, was found dead in the sauna at his Surrey mansion in 2013, having supposedly hanged himself with a towel from the taps on his bath.
Berezovsky, 67, was once such good friends with Vladimir Putin that he spent millions bankrolling the Russian leader. But the pair fell out spectacularly in 2000 over who should call the shots, prompting Berezovsky to flee to Britain. Tony Blair granted him asylum in 2003.
Surrounded by teams of Russian security men, and with a personal bodyguard alongside him 24 hours a day, he was convinced his Kremlin enemies would track him down and kill him.
‘Boris was a fighter, and suicide was just not in his DNA,’ said Dr Yuri Felshtinsky, a close friend. ‘Boris feared for his safety, and understood the Kremlin aimed to destroy him as an example for anyone else who opposed them.’
British police ruled the death as suicide. U.S. intelligence reportedly believe he was assassinated.
3. THE RUNAWAY BUSINESSMAN
ALEXANDER Perepilichnyy, who died in Surrey in 2012, was a successful former Russian businessman who had also fallen foul of the Kremlin. Having fled to Britain in 2009, he agreed to give evidence to a British businessman named Bill Browder, who was investigating a huge Russian tax scam (Browder’s lawyer had died in a Moscow jail).
Perepilichnyy, 44, had been repeatedly threatened by Russian agents, even while in Britain, with telephone calls and warnings that he would be ‘destroyed’ if he continued to act against the interests of the Kremlin.
The exiled Russian had taken a mysterious trip to Paris and, on returning to his home in a secure, gated community, complained of feeling ill. He went for a jog to clear his head, and was found dead near his home a short while later.
Surrey police quickly ruled out foul play. But an inquest heard evidence that his stomach continued a substance known as ‘heartbreak grass’ — or gelsemium, a poison which causes paralysis of the spinal cord, physical collapse and death by asphyxiation.
‘It’s so obvious that it’s an assassination,’ say Chris Phillips, the former head of Britain’s National Counter Terrorism Security Office. ‘There’s no way it wasn’t a hit.’
4. THE POISONED TURNCOAT
THERE is little dispute about the truth of what happened to Alexander litvinenko, a former KGB officer whose tea was poisoned at london’s Millennium Hotel in 2006.
litvinenko had fled to Britain with evidence that gangsters were plotting the murder of Boris Berezovsky, an oligarch who — as explained earlier — had fallen out with President Vladimir Putin.
He fell ill after meeting an ex-KGB officer and his associate at the Millennium Hotel in london’s Grosvenor Square, where he drank a cup of tea poisoned with a substance called polonium-210 — a deadly radioactive element.
The polonium-210 used to kill litvinenko, 43, was traced to a Russian nuclear plant and two of the alleged poisoners have been named as key lieutenants and allies of President Putin.
In 2015, a British public inquiry found that Putin had ‘likely’ approved the assassination in an act of nuclear terrorism in the British capital. Nobody has been brought to trial, despite British calls for the two Russian agents to be handed over.
5. THE BRITISH SCIENTIST
IN ONE of the most perplexing cases in the BuzzFeed dossier, a British scientist called Dr Matthew Puncher, who had discovered proof that Alexander litvinenko was poisoned, was found with stab wounds from two separate knives at his home in Oxfordshire in 2016.
He had wounds in his neck, arm and stomach. There was blood everywhere. A kitchen knife was in his hand. A smaller knife, also blood-stained, was in the sink several yards away.
Police decided Mr Puncher, 46, had stabbed himself to death, a highly unusual means of suicide.
Puncher, a renowned government radiation scientist, had helped uncover evidence that litvinenko was poisoned by polonium — leading to a public inquiry saying that Putin was involved in the attack.
Dr Puncher was an expert in radiation, and worked for Public Health england at the UK’s Atomic energy Research establishment at Harwell, Oxfordshire.
He had been given sole responsibility over a contract with the U.S. federal government for a programme measuring polonium levels in people who previously
worked on the USSR’s nuclear weapons. A pathologist said he could not ‘exclude’ the possibility that someone else was involved in the death — but concluded the injuries were self-inflicted.
6. THE RUSSIAN DIPLOMAT
Igor Ponomarev, a Russian diplomat, died in London in 2006 — just 48 hours before Alexander Litvinenko’s tea was poisoned.
He was also due to meet an investigator for Italian authorities probing the involvement of Russian secret services in organised crime in the UK and europe. He had been to the opera in Central London before returning home, complaining of extreme thirst. After drinking three litres of water, he collapsed. no post-mortem was ever held. His body was swiftly repatriated to moscow.
Such raging thirst is consistent with poisoning by radioactive thalium, and a german news magazine has reported that his family believe the healthy 41-year-old was murdered. BuzzFeed says the U.S. believes he was assassinated.
7. THE GCHQ BOFFIN
The body of gareth Williams, a former worker at GCHQ on secondment to mI6 in London, was discovered inside a sports bag, with the padlocks on the outside, at his flat in Central London. The 32-year-old worked as a computer systems expert for ten years at the government’s secret surveillance centre. His superiors found his decomposing body in August 2010 after knocking down his door when he did not turn up for work for a week.
According to the BuzzFeed report, U.S. spies believe he was killed because he was investigating Russian money-laundering.
8. THE ROGUE OLIGARCH
The discovery of Boris Berezovsky’s body at his Surrey mansion came five years after the unexplained death of another billionaire he joined forces with to put Putin into power — and who also later fell out spectacularly with the Russian leader. Badri Patarkatsishvili, a businessman and politician, was found dead at the Surrey mansion he owned, not far from Berezovsky’s home, in 2008. Police, who initially described the death as ‘suspicious’, tested for radiation poisoning, but no traces were found. The case was closed.
Shortly before his death, the 52-year-old had spoken of an assassination plot, claiming that a hit squad of four georgians had been sent by the Kremlin to London ‘to do something against me’, while secret tapes of a conversation between a Russian official and a Chechen hitman emerged in which they discussed how to make him ‘disappear completely’.
According to BuzzFeed, America believes he was poisoned, triggering a cardiac arrest — a favourite Russian means of assassination.
9. TRINNY’S EX-HUSBAND
A Friend of Scot Young — who, as detailed earlier, died on the railings outside his flat — Johnny elichaoff was part of a dining club of millionaire property developers whose favourite haunt was the Cipriani restaurant in London.
elichaoff also apparently committed suicide in 2014, just a month before Young was found impaled on those railings.
The 55-year-old former husband of Tv presenter Trinny Woodall plunged to his death from the roof of Whiteleys shopping centre in West London. A former rock drummer, he became friends with Young after moving into ‘financial advising’.
While his family were shocked that he could have committed suicide, others claimed he had serious financial concerns and mental health problems. According to BuzzFeed, this case is among those U.S. intelligence believed were assassinations.
10. THE PROPERTY TYCOON
YET another member of the Cipriani dining club was property tycoon Robert Curtis. Like the rest of his friends, he lived a fast lifestyle and once dated the model Caprice.
Yet, at just 47, he apparently threw himself under a Tube train in north London in 2012. He, too, was also said to have suffered in the recession and had bad debts.
Yet he was also believed to have forged links with Russian ‘businessmen’ through his friendship with Scot Young. Curtis was said by BuzzFeed to be part of the U.S. intelligence files relating to assassinations.
11. POLO STAR WHO MET THE QUEEN
PAUL CASTLE, another of the Cipriani dining set, also died under a Tube train in 2010.
He, too, had everything to live for, having left school with few qualifications and going on to play polo alongside Prince Charles. one picture shows the Queen shaking his hand after a match.
A dashing character, Castle, 61, loved the company of beautiful women and was a fixture at some of London’s most exclusive restaurants. After making a fortune in property, he became friends with Young and the other — now dead — members of his circle.
He threw himself under a Tube at Bond Street, with one associate saying that he ‘owed a lot of money to the wrong people’. This case, according to BuzzFeed, was also regarded by the U.S. as having a strong connection to the Russians.
Four years ago, the daily Telegraph reported a source who claimed Scot Young, Robert Curtis and Paul Castle were being pursued by the Russian mafia over massive debts after being scammed in a vast property deal — co-ordinated by the exiled oligarch Boris Berezovsky — called Project moscow, which collapsed in 2006.
12. THE OIL PLUTOCRAT
Another Russian emigre was Yuri golubev, 65, the co-founder of the Russian oil giant Yukos, which was at the centre of a vicious war for control of its assets.
He was found dead in 2007 with a suspected heart attack in the living room of his London flat, shortly after returning from a trip to moscow, after which he complained of feeling unwell. Again, U.S. intelligence is reported as believing he was murdered by poison.