My son might still be alive if embassy staff had listened
Socialite’s fury after boy drugged and left to die in Moscow
THE grieving mother of a young Briton who froze to death in Russia after being drugged and robbed by a taxi driver has attacked the Foreign Office for failing to help when he went missing.
Publisher Fiona Scott Lazareff told The Mail on Sunday that her son Nicolas might have been saved if British Embassy staff in Moscow had acted more quickly to liaise with the Russian police and authorities.
The Manchester University graduate, 22, went missing after a night out with his younger brother Alexei, 21, in the Russian capital.
The brothers, both fluent Russianspeakers, were picked up by a rogue cab driver who drugged them with spiked beer before robbing them of their money and mobile phones. He then dumped them in sub-zero temperatures in a village near Moscow.
Alexei managed to flag down a passing car. But while he was talking with the car’s driver, a heavily disorientated Nicolas disappeared.
The driver then took Alexei back to central Moscow where he began desperately seeking help to find his brother. Nicolas was found dead by Russian police several days later.
Now Mrs Lazareff, from Battersea, South London, is calling for an urgent review of Foreign Office procedures when dealing with missing people and emergencies.
‘When I phoned the embassy in Moscow, all I got was answer machines because it happened out of hours,’ she said. ‘Eventually somebody rang me from London and suggested I reported him missing to Battersea police station. I thought, “Is this a joke?”’
Mrs Lazareff has also launched a campaign to encourage people trav- elling abroad to register their mobile telephone’s individual IMEI number with the British Consul in the country they are visiting, so that a missing person’s movements can be tracked faster.
Tory MP Jane Ellison has taken up her cause and written to the Foreign Office calling for an urgent review and for the IMEI registration scheme to be set up immediately.
Mrs Ellison criticised officials for ‘compounding Mrs Lazareff’s distress with inadequate support’ and failing to ‘interact with investigating police forces’. Mrs Lazareff added: ‘As the clock was ticking, my son was out there in the middle of nowhere.
‘Maybe if the Foreign Office had been more proactive and there was an IMEI register, he could have been found.
‘Instead, the embassy seemed to assume he was a young lad out having a good time and that he would turn up.
‘Afterwards, even though the ambassador knew about Nick’s tragic death, he didn’t even send a letter of condolence.
‘All I got was a standard template email saying if I wanted to make a complaint to click on a link.
‘It was so heartless – like complaining about faulty broadband.
‘Nothing will bring my precious son back but I don’t want his loss to be in vain – no mother should have to go through what I’m suffering at the moment.’
A Foreign Office spokesman insisted it did have ‘a 24/7 service’.