Ex-Soviet spy linked Putin to organized crime, says widow

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Marina Litvinenko
Marina Litvinenko, widow of Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian agent killed with polonium in London, said that her husband believed Vladimir Putin lacked the mettle to stamp out corruption inside Russia’s security agency and that he had links to organized crime

Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian agent killed with polonium in London, believed Vladimir Putin lacked the mettle to stamp out corruption inside Russia’s security agency and that he had links to organized crime, his widow said on Monday.

Giving evidence to a public inquiry at London’s High Court into the former spy’s death, Marina Litvinenko said her husband had taken his concerns in 1998 to Putin, who then headed the Federal Security Service (FSB), the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB.

Marina Litvinenko said Putin, who on Dec. 31, 1999, would become Russia’s acting president, had done nothing and that shortly after raising his concerns, Litvinenko himself, known to his family as Sasha, had come under investigation.

“Sasha said it was not a productive meeting at all because he didn’t believe his (Putin’s) professional skills, he didn’t believe he could make any change,” she said.

Litvinenko, who served in the KGB and then the FSB unit dealing with organized crime, doubted Putin’s ability because he had become director of the FSB without doing work “on the ground”, added the 52-year-old widow.

Litvinenko died in 2006 after drinking tea poisoned with rare radioactive isotope polonium-210, which British police believe he was given by two Russians he had met there.

The main suspects, Andrei Lugovoy and Dmitry Kovtun, deny involvement. Russia has refused to extradite them to face trial.

The inquiry, which opened last week, has also heard that Litvinenko had told police that Putin, who served as a KGB spy in East Germany, ordered his killing. The Kremlin has repeatedly dismissed the accusation as nonsense.

“CRIME CONNECTIONS”

According to his widow, Litvinenko had also suspected Putin, who became first deputy mayor of St Petersburg in 1994, of having links to the criminal gangs which mushroomed as the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

“On the position of being Deputy Mayor of St Petersburg, Sasha believed he was involved in some crime connections,” said Marina, who said Russia’s second city was the crime capital of Russia at that time.

Leaked cables show that U.S. diplomats viewed Putin as a leader who ruled by allowing crooked spies and corrupt officials siphon off cash from Russia, the world’s biggest energy producer. The Kremlin has dismissed the claims.

Marina told the inquiry her husband had first begun to have doubts about the actions of the FSB during the war against Chechen separatists in 1994.

By 1998, he was working for a secret unit of the agency known as URPO, which investigated organized economic crime, and had reached the rank of lieutenant-colonel.

But he became disillusioned over some of its illegal activities and the suggestion that he should kill oligarch Boris Berezovsky, whom he had got to know in 1994 while investigating an assassination attempt.

With the assistance of Berezovsky, he made a complaint about the activities of URPO and arranged for the 1998 meeting with Putin shortly after he had taken over as FSB director.

In late 1998, Litvinenko fronted a news conference Berezovsky had organized with a number of other FSB agents, some masked, to denounce corruption in the agency.

“It was an extraordinary event,” Marina said.

In 1999 Litvinenko was charged and cleared of assaulting a suspect two years earlier but immediately re-arrested and accused of theft. This case was dropped but he faced further allegations in early 2000 shortly before he fled Russia.

The open hearings run until late March and a report is due by the end of this year.

Reuters

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3 responses to “Ex-Soviet spy linked Putin to organized crime, says widow”

  1. arzatna1 Avatar

    I don’t think Marina Litvinenko will have too much difficulty in convincing the court that Putin has links to organized crime and could be the man behind the murder of her husband

    1. 5thDrawer Avatar

      If you don’t read the whole ‘Gulag Archipelago’, it’s difficult to understand how deep in the Russian Psyche that ‘system’ became. Being in it was the only way to survive in many parts of the country, let alone when ‘inside’ the jail system serving a ‘fiver’ or a ‘tenner’ – standard work-camp times of sentencing. The “bosses’ run the camp, and the commandant is happy to let them if it keeps his set ‘work-quotas’ up to ‘Politburo-Decreed Production Figures’.

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