Russian-born businessman: I met poisoned ex-spy Litvinenko in Israel
Spy allegedly passed documents to Leonid Nevzlin, a former executive of the Russian oil company Yukos.
By Yossi Melman and AgenciesRussian-born businessman Leonid Nevzlin, former CEO of the Yukos oil company and current chairman of the Diaspora Museum in Tel Aviv, said Friday that he had met in Israel with former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, who died Thursday in London from poisoning.
During the meeting, Litvinenko allegedly passed Nevzlin documents containing classified information possibly damaging to the current leadership in Russia.
In Nevzlin's estimation, Litvinenko's murder was tied to the information relating to Yukos contained in the documents. Nevzlin has turned the documents over to the London Metropolitan Police, who are investigating the murder.
British police announced Friday that traces of a radioactive substance, Polonium 210, were found in Litvinenko's urine. Polonium 210 is known to be highly lethal and very difficult to detect.
Litvinenko served until 1998 as a colonel in the Federal Security Services of Russia as part of a special unit that carried out investigations and special operations against businessmen. A few months before his murder, Litvinenko arrived in Israel in order to pass the documents to Nevzelin.
The Government of Russia has issued an arrest warrant for Nevzlin, arguing that he is wanted for tax evasion, budget irregularities, and for connection to the murder of the mayor a Siberian town where Yukos was operating.
It appears at this time that Litvinenko was murdered because of his association with Anna Politkovskaya, the Russian journalist who was shot to death in her apartment on October 7. Politkovskaya had also been a harsh critic of Putin's
Nevzlin and his business partner Michael Hodrokovsky, who is incarcerated in a Russian prison, were formerly large shareholders in Yukos, once one of the largest holding companies in Russia, as well as one of the largest oil companies in the world.
After the struggle of the company's owners against Putin's administration, and their support of opposition parties hostile to the Russian president, the government opened a series of investigations against the company, eventually resulting in the company's bankruptcy, and the imprisonment of Hodrokovsky and Platon Levedev, an additional business partner in Yukos.
|
Alexander Litvinenko, shortly before his death in a London hospital Thursday. (AP) |
Why Facebook Connect?
Comment on Haaretz.com articles with your Facebook login, and share your thoughts on your own wall.
- Latest
- Most Viewed
- Most Rated
- Open all
Haaretz are crazy
I see Haaretz condones people who call for insurgency within the Russian Federation, yet doesn't permit responses that suggest the same for Israel. Hypocrite pigs.
Lights out Europe. Since Litivenko has/had ties to those in Israel, and to scum Zionists like Berezovsky it's highly probable that he also had ties to filth within the Russian Federation that don't like the "nationalization" IE What is RUSSIA'S is for RUSSIANS of the federation's wealth. You call for more Chechen war on the RF, then let Hezbollah be stocked with more cool anti tank weapons, tit for tat pig.
Arafat died of some kind of fairly rapid onset blood disorder, according to this Guardian story: http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1374609,00.html "He looked like a bird, because he had shrunk," she says. "His face was as if he had been burned by the sun. It was red, red, red, and his skin was peeling." "But French physicians - and specialists in toxicology and biological warfare - had made little progress in determining the cause of his illness. After four days of tests, they were confident that he did not suffer from leukaemia, but they had been unable to locate the cause of the blood disorder."
There is no correct Israeli way to color this story. Who cares if you hate Putin, Russia or some obtuse Middle Eastern fact. The more you let persoanl prejudice affect your political outlook the more a slave to it you become.
Good job, I'm proud of you my spiritual son
I can't believe that this sort of perverse racism is still practiced! What in the hell is wrong with people like this "john"?
The odds are that Arafat does have AIDS. Aids is a terrible ill, must that must be treated. In a muslim world, aids is linked with homossexual behavior, that is a problem to men and women. Be homossexual is a problem too. It is a hell to both of them. Arafat arranged his pseudo marriage to his gold "wife." She quickly bore him a child and then cashed in at her Paris abode.
I have not heard about Arafat's Polonium; nor about his cancer treatments. Have not you invented this ad hoc?
You cannot possibly have any proof of what caused Arafat's death since he was treated in a French military hospital under great secrecy. Of course, his symptoms were also very different, but what would you know about that, sherlock.
The Russians or Soviets could not build their oil fields to it's current capacity,it took private Russian business to accomplish that and then the oppressive hand of Putin and his government stole it-they tried to finally finish the job by killing Litvinenko but the ugly mess will not die.Russia can not afford peace in the MIdEast,oil prices will plunge and the Russian economy, just like Iran and it's sattelite countries and terrorist orginazations. But China will prosper with low oil prices,one wonders why they support terrorist Iran and the like? I guess, because China is a totalitarian regime and wishes to expand it's empire-that is why.Yet, global warming from fossil fuels-oil- threatens even totalitarian empires.
Arafat, too, had traces of radioactive Polonium in his body. His doctors thought at the time it was the result of his cancer treatment. Hmmm
But John, I thought the Jews were the victims, not the perpetrators? Or have I been misinformed?
Berezovsky was a good example of what the world needs in order to put Ivan to his knees where he belongs. Chechnia and Georgia as well as Moldova, Ukrain and others must unite to bring this discusting country to it's knees once again. Do it now, do it soon.
This horrific crime, the first of its kind, that has turned a human being into a small dirty bomb, should be taken very seriously and open every thinking person's mind to the reality of the dangers faced by people everywhere.