After poisoning, new spotlight on 14 UK deaths

LONDON: Following the nerve agent attack on Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal, British MPs have called on the government to re-examine 14 deaths on UK soil.

The deaths, investigated by the BuzzFeed news website, include those of a Russian oligarch, a British spy found in a bag, and Russians whose deaths remain unexplained.

BuzzFeed claimed US intelligence suspects the 14 deaths were hit jobs by Moscow or the Russian mafia.

Yvette Cooper, who chairs parliament’s interior affairs scrutiny committee, has written to Home Secretary Amber Rudd, the interior minister, asking for a review of the cases.

Rudd on Tuesday said that police and MI5, the domestic intelligence agency, would assist in examining allegations of potential Russian involvement in the deaths.

The BuzzFeed investigation came before Nikolai Glushkov, a former top businessman and associate of Kremlin opponent Boris Berezovksy, was found dead at his UK home on Monday.

Here are six of the 14 cases:

Boris Berezovsky

Died: March 23, 2013

Berezovsky made his fortune from Russia’s privatisation of state assets in the 1990s and controlled the country’s main television channel and national airline.

Initially close to Putin, the pair fell out and he fled to exile in Britain, getting political asylum in 2003.

He was found in a locked bathroom having apparently hanged himself with a scarf. The coroner could not say conclusively whether he was unlawfully killed or took his own life.

Alexander Perepilichny

Died: November 10, 2012

Perepilichny left Moscow for Britain in 2009. He gave Swiss prosecutors documents detailing the involvement of senior Russian officials in a vast financial crime case.

He went out jogging and was found dead on the road. He was 43.

Two post-mortems proved inconclusive.

Two years after his death, Perepilichny’s life insurance company ordered tests that detected a toxin from a Chinese plant called Gelsemium, which can trigger cardiac arrest, in his stomach.

The cause of death is yet to be determined and an inquest into the death is ongoing.

Badri Patarkatsishvili

Died: February 12, 2008

A close associate of Berezovsky, the Georgian tycoon oversaw the privatisation of the Sibneft oil company. Like Berezovsky, he clashed with Putin and he too was charged with fraud and embezzlement.

His country’s wealthiest citizen, he came third in the 2008 Georgian presidential election.

A month later, he collapsed at his mansion outside London and died, aged 52. He had met Berezovsky and Glushkov earlier in the day.

His death was put down to a heart attack.

Gareth Williams

Died: August 2010

A mathematician at Britain’s GCHQ electronic eavesdropping service, Williams, 31, was found dead at a London flat. His naked body was found in a bag, padlocked from the outside, in the bath.

Two experts cited in an inquest into the death tried and failed 400 times to lock the bag from the inside. The coroner ruled out suicide and found his death was “likely to have been criminally meditated”. No suspects were ever identified.

Berezovsky used his influence to help President Vladimir Putin’s rise to power but later fell out with the Kremlin leader and went into exile in 2000 in the United Kingdom, where he became one of the most outspoken critics of the Russian administration.

Stephen Curtis

Died: March 3, 2004.

Curtis was the managing director of Menatep, which held a big stake in Russia’s now-defunct Yukos oil giant, controlled by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was jailed and is now a Kremlin critic in exile in Switzerland.

Curtis, a lawyer who also worked for Berezovsky, died when his helicopter crashed into a field.

An inquest into the death said it was accidental. The coroner said there was “thin evidence” to support conspiracy theories, despite them having “all the ingredients for an espionage thriller”.

Scot Young

Died: December 8, 2014

Young, a wealthy British property developer, fronted deals for Berezovsky which reportedly angered the Russian government.

He fell from a fourth-floor flat in the upmarket Marylebone area of central London and was impaled on railing spikes. Police treated his death as non-suspicious.

The coroner said the death could not be ruled a suicide, saying there was inconclusive evidence to determine his state of mind and intention before he fell out of the window.