Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: December 29, 2006 11:03:38 AM PST
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Nevzlin, Russian-Israeli Oil Mobster Whom Litvinenko
Visited in Israel, Now in the U.S.
RUSSIAN MAN CAUGHT ON CCTV MAY HOLD KEY TO LITVINENKO POISON PLOT
Created: 29.12.2006 13:16 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 13:17 MSK, 8 hours
2 minutes ago
MosNews
http://www.mosnews.com/news/2006/12/29/poloniumtrail.shtml
Detectives investigating the murder of Alexander Litvinenko are
trying to trace a Russian businessman who flew to Britain at the
same time as a consignment of deadly polonium-210 was allegedly
smuggled into London, The Times reported Friday.
The man was spotted on a flight from Hamburg sitting beside Dimtri
Kovtun, another Russian whom German police are investigating for
trafficking the radioactive material used to poison the former KGB
spy.
Officers have studied CCTV footage from airports at Hamburg and
London and are understood to believe that the two men were
travelling together.
However, the mystery figure disappeared after leaving Heathrow with
Mr Kovtun.
The name he used on the flight and the passport presented to
immigration officials does not show up on any hotel register in the
capital. It is believed that he met up again with Mr Kovtun in
London on November 1, the day Litvinenko fell ill. Mr Kovtun was
one of the last people to see Litvinenko before he collapsed.
Scotland Yard will not say if it regards Mr Kovtun as a victim, a
witness or a suspect.
German authorities say that traces of polonium-210 were found at a
number of locations visited by Mr Kovtun while he was in Hamburg at
the end of October.
Russian authorities refused German requests to carry out check for
polonium on the Aeroflot flight that Mr Kovtun took to Hamburg.
Martin Koehnke, Hamburg’s chief prosecutor, said: “We assume that
Mr Kovtun arrived on October 28 on a flight from Moscow and that he
was already contaminated with polonium-210.”
He said it appeared that from the moment Mr Kovtun landed at
Hamburg airport he started spreading the radioative substance,
including to the car sent to collect him.
German police are puzzled why no polonium-210 was found on the
Germanwings flight that Mr Kovtun and the mystery Russian travelled
on to London.
Mr Kovtun remains in a Moscow clinic where doctors say that they
are still testing him for radiation poisoning.
Russian police say that they believe Mr Kovtun was also a target
for the assassin, and the businessman denies vehemently any role in
the poison plot. The British team is reportedly still seeking more
information from Mr Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoy, his business
partner. Polonium-210 was discovered on two British flights on
which Mr Lugovoy travelled to London in October. On October 25 he
took BA 875 and stayed at the Sheraton Park Lane. Radiation was
found at both locations. It was also found on BA 872, which Mr
Lugovoy took on October 31, and at the Millenium Hotel, in
Grosvenor Square, where he and Mr Kovtun stayed and where they
entertained Litvinenko.
Experts also isolated traces at a third hotel, the Parkes in
Knightsbridge, where both men stayed during another trip to London
from October 16 to 18 when they flew on Transaero, the Russian
carrier. Mr Lugovoy, who also remains in the Moscow clinic, denies
any role in the plot and claims that he is being framed.
Russian authorities say none of the poison was found on the Boeing
737s used by Transaero.
The Russian Prosecutor-General is trying to shift the focus away
from Moscow as his officers prepare to travel to London in the new
year to interview a number of Russian exiles. They will include
Boris Berezovsky, the oligarch critical of Mr Putin, and Akhmed
Zakayev, the Chechen separatist envoy.
Friends of Litvinenko fear that the Kremlin will use the
investigation to try to settle scores. This week the Prosecutor
General announced he wants to question a number of figures from
Yukos, the oil giant, whose assets were seized. He named Leonid
Nevzlin, a former executive.
Mr Nevzlin fled to Israel in 2003 but flew to New Jersey at the
weekend for a holiday in America. Russian officials on Thursday
asked the US to arrest him.
A spokesman for Mr Nevzlin denied any role in the plot. Mr Nevzlin
told The Times how Litvinenko had travelled to Tel Aviv to hand
over a file on how Russia’s Federal Security Service planned to
claw back millions from wealthy Russians now living in the West.
----------
YUKOS BOSS SPURNS RUSSIA MURDER CLAIMS
By Harvey Morris in Jerusalem
The Financial Times (UK), December 29 2006
Leonid Nevzlin, a former Russian oil billionaire, on Thursday
dismissed allegations by Moscow that he ordered the radioactive
poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko and said he had co-operated with
British authorities investigating the London murder of the
dissident Russian ex-spy.
The Russian prosecutor-general’s office said on Wednesday that it
suspected Israel-based Mr Nevzlin might be involved in the death of
Mr Litvinenko, who died in a London hospital on November 23 from
exposure to highly toxic polonium-210.
Mr Nevzlin, who is visiting the US, fled to Israel in 2003 to
continue managing the affairs of the Russian oil giant Yukos as its
chief executive, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, faced fraud and tax evasion
charges that would lead to his imprisonment.
An aide authorised to speak on behalf of Mr Nevzlin from New York
said the allegations followed a pattern of Russian behaviour in
relation to the former oil magnate. “There was never a single time
that Leonid came to the US without a new insinuation or accusation
being made against him,” the aide said.
“Leonid has been granted a 10-year visa, as an Israeli citizen, to
the US and the US authorities will have done a full check on all
the allegations against him.” He denied Russian reports Mr Nevzlin
had been detained on his arrival at Newark airport on December 24.
The aide acknowledged that Mr Litvinenko met Mr Nevzlin in Tel Aviv
weeks before he died and handed over documents relating to the
Kremlin’s takeover of Yukos. “Litvinenko came to Israel on his own
initiative. When we learnt about his tragic death, we sent these
documents to the Israeli justice ministry and to the British
embassy in Tel Aviv.”
The aide said the latest Russian allegations against Mr Nevzlin
were an attempt to muddy the waters surrounding the Litvinenko
investigation and came at a time when Mr Khodorkovsky, his former
close associate, and Platon Lebedev, another jailed former Yukos
partner, faced fresh charges of money-laundering.
He said Mr Nevzlin was scheduled to meet senior figures in the US,
including congressmen and State Department officials.
“The Russians are really scared about what Leonid might say in the
US,” he said.
Wednesday’s statement from the Russian prosecutor’s office linked
the latest allegations to other murder charges against Mr Nevzlin
on which the Russian authorities have unsuccessfully sought his
extradition.
A Moscow court issued an arrest warrant against him in 2004 for
allegedly organising contract killings and assassination attempts
against several targets, including Yukos competitors.
Yuri Shmidt, a lawyer for Mr Khodorkovsky, dismissed the
allegations as absurd. “The prosecutor-general’s office is keen to
accuse Nevzlin and stoke up all kinds of emotion,” he was quoted as
saying yesterday. “I won’t be surprised if even more monstrous
allegations continue.”
----------
PUTIN ORDERS CRACKDOWN ON ECONOMIC CRIMES AFTER BANKER’S MURDER
Created: 16.09.2006 16:28 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 21:55 MSK
MosNews
http://www.mosnews.com/news/2006/12/29/
President Vladimir Putin said Friday that the killing of a top
Central Bank official underlined Russia’s problem with economic
crimes and ordered the main security service and other government
agencies to mount a coordinated crackdown, The Associated Press
reports.
The murder of bank first deputy chairman Andrei Kozlov, who was
shot point-blank in the head by two assailants Wednesday, was
widely believed to be connected to his campaign against money-
laundering and criminality in the banking sector.
“In my view, this is a manifestation of a worsening situation in
the fight against economic crime,” Putin told Russian officials in
a meeting shown on Russian television. He ordered the Federal
Security Service, the Soviet-era KGB’s main successor, the Central
Bank, the Interior Ministry and other agencies to form a group to
oversee a campaign to curb such crimes.
Putin said economic manipulations meant “great financial resources
are taken abroad,” with much of the money “used for wide criminal
goals, for terrorist activities and the drug mafia.”
While on a lesser scale than in the turbulent 1990s, contract
killings of businessmen and bankers still occur regularly in
Russia, where business conflicts often turn violent and the
government is seeking closer control over economic activity.
Investigators are looking at four scenarios in the killing, “but
the main one — the most prevalent — is tied with his professional
activity,” the Interfax news agency quoted First Deputy Prosecutor
General Alexander Buksman as saying.
Responsible for banking supervision, Kozlov had withdrawn the
licenses of dozens of banks and oversaw an ambitious program to
reduce criminality and money laundering in the banking system.
Since mid-1994, the Central Bank has shut some 90 institutions, the
newspaper Vremya Novostei said.
The business newspaper Kommersant said most of the 33 banks
stripped of their licenses this summer were allegedly involved in
illegal import schemes in which the worth of goods was understated
to cut customs rates. Kommersant said the bank shutdowns could cost
import-export firms millions of dollars a year.
Earlier this month, Kozlov proposed to bar bank owners accused of
money laundering from ever being in the banking business again,
which would end a widespread practice of those stripped of banking
licenses simply reregistering and doing business under a new name.
Kozlov’s most conspicuous achievement had been the introduction of
a deposit insurance plan designed to restore Russians’ faith in
banks after widespread defaults in 1998 cost many people their
savings. In addition to the banks whose licenses were revoked at
Kozlov’s initiative, many others were effectively earmarked for
closure by his refusal to give them access to the deposit insurance
program.
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