Second Russian death in UK now needs an inquiry, Burnham insists
THE investigation into the death of a second Russian dissident on Britain’s streets should be upgraded to a public inquiry in the wake of the Alexander Litvinenko revelations, the shadow home secretary has said.
Alexander Perepilichnyy, 44, collapsed while jogging outside his £3 million home in Weybridge, Surrey, in November 2012. Police ruled out foul play at the time, but serious concerns of an assassination have been raised after a preliminary inquest hearing was told the tycoon could have been poisoned by a lethal rare plant sometimes used by Russian and Chinese hitmen.
The businessman fled to the UK and revealed “explosive” information in an investigation into an £140 million Russian money laundering scheme using Swiss bank accounts before he died.
He was also being sued at the time of his death by a Moscow consultancy firm run by Dmitry Kovtun, one of the two men suspected of poisoning former KGB agent Litvinenko during a meeting in London in 2006.
Retired High Court judge Sir Robert Owen had the Litvinenko inquest upgraded to a public inquiry so he could fully investigate claims that he was murdered on orders of the Kremlin. He ruled on Thursday that he had been killed by Kovtun and Andrey Lugovoy, a former KGB bodyguard, and the killing had “probably” been sanctioned by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Andy Burnham, the shadow home secretary, said many questions surrounded the death of Mr Perepilichnyy and a “routine inquest” was insufficient. “It would be a mistake to assume that the Litvinenko situation is a oneoff,” he said.
“My concern is that a routine inquest may not be able to look at the larger picture and may not be able to make connections where it needs to, to understand the background.”
At the time of his death, Mr Perepilichnyy was helping Hermitage Capital Management, to uncover a $230 million (£148 million) fraud in Swiss bank accounts. The investment fund’s lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, died in Russian custody in 2009.
It emerged last year that traces of a compound that could have come from the highly toxic plant Gelsemium elegens were found in Mr Perepilichnyy’s stomach.