Alexander Litvinenko

1962 - 23 November 2006. Exiled Russian former security officer who died of Polonium posining in London.

Background

Born in Voronezh, south-west Russia, he joined the army out of school, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel. Then, in the dying days of the Soviet Union in 1988, he entered the counter-intelligence department of the KGB.

In 1991, once the KGB's directorates had split up, he worked for the federal security service (FSB), fighting terrorism and organised crime, sometimes operating in Chechnya. In 1997 he moved to one of the most secret divisions of the service, a unit called URPO investigating "organised criminal formations".

Boris Berezovsky

It is understood that he had special responsibility for countering attempts by the Russian mafia to infiltrate the security services. In 1998, he declared his failure at this task. At a press conference he accused the FSB, then headed by Mr Putin, of ordering him to assassinate Mr Berezovsky. In turn charged with corruption by Moscow, Mr Litvinenko fled to London and continued his onslaught with a book, The FSB Blows Up Russia, in which he accused his former employers of murdering 300 people in 1999 by demolishing apartment blocks with explosives and blaming the attacks on Chechen rebels.

Affiliations

• Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti

Connections

• Marina Litvinenko - Wife
• Boris Berezovsky
• Mario Scaramella
• Andrei Lugovoy
• Akhmed Zakayev
• Tim Bell
• Alex Goldfarb
• Mikhail Trepashkin
• Yuri Felshtinsky

Obituary: Alexander Litvinenko, by Tom Parfitt, The Guardian, 25 November 2006.

Who Killed Litvinenko?, by Cahal Milmo, The Independent, 25 November 2006.