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Authors: Luke Harding
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entries speak of middle-class normality. Shopping trips to Waitrose and Sainsbury’s, direct debits for Sky Digital, and London’s congestion charge. The account is with HSBC. Its holders are ‘Mr Edwin Redwald Carter & Mrs Maria Anna Carter’. The balance in 2006 fluctuates between £969.02 and £8,076.36. The Carters don’t appear to be especially well-off. Nor are they broke.
In fact, Litvinenko’s bank statements tell us a lot. They give a picture of a typical, health-conscious family (purchases from The Natural Choice), with one child and a car. The Litvinenkos were living at 140 Osier Crescent, a terraced house of yellow brick with a small balcony anda parking spot. The modern estate is in Muswell Hill, in the north London borough of Haringey.
The bank statements root the Litvinenkos in their area. There are debits of £5.40 from Transport for London in East Finchley and Highgate – Litvinenko’s regular off-peak travel-card. Visits too to The Children’s Bookshop in Muswell Hill. And Japanese food: Yo! Sushi at Gatwick Airport and Itsu, Litvinenko’s favourite restaurant in Piccadilly Circus. The odd small sum of money comes in from time to time – a £75 payment from the David Lloyd centre, where Marina taught a kids’ class in ballroom dancing.
One regular credit entry is unusual, though.
On the 26th of each month, Litvinenko received an anonymous payment. It appears on the statement simply as ‘Transfer’, from an unnamed bank account. The account ends with the digits ‘3698’. The sum in sterling is always the same: ‘2000.00’. The paying organisation appears – one might think – to be rather bashful.
The sum of £2,000 found in among the groceries and trips to Tesco came from the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), also known as MI6.
British intelligence didn’t recruit Litvinenko in Moscow. Nor was he ever a spy in Russia: his career in the KGB and FSB involved detective work against criminals, not intelligence. When he arrived in the UK at the end of 2000 seeking political asylum, Litvinenko told Home Office officials truthfully: ‘I didn’t work in intelligence and I didn’t work against England.’ He added: ‘I have as yet had nothing to do with British intelligence.’
According to Marina Litvinenko and Alex Goldfarb, Litvinenko began working for MI6 in 2003, some two years after he fled to London. The secret service agency put him on its payroll the next year. In Britain, he was never a full-time agent.
Instead, Litvinenko worked for the agency as an expert adviser. MI6 consulted him on Russian organised crime in Europe, with Litvinenko travelling to various European countries, especially Spain, but also to the Baltic states, Italy and Georgia, assisting their law-enforcement efforts. He spent more time away on ‘business trips’. He continued his journalistic work but kept a lower profile.
In line with its long-standing policy, the British government has neither confirmed nor denied that Litvinenko was an MI6 employee. Its file on Litvinenko hasn’t been made public. We don’t know who hired him. Or if Sir John Scarlett – MI6’s prickly then chief, known by the initial ‘C’ – ever perused Litvinenko’s personnel record.
Scarlett knew about Moscow agents. He had been involved in the operation to recruit Gordievsky, the UK’s most prized defector. Scarlett was fluent in Russian and lived in Moscow in the 1970s. In 1994, Scarlett, by this point Moscow station chief, was expelled from Russia in a political row.
Marina Litvinenko says she knew of her husband’s undercover job. After all, she says, how else might Alexander explain the mysterious £2,000-a-month payments? She didn’t know details. She was uncertain if Litvinenko worked for MI5 or MI6, the numbers a source of confusion.
MI6 gave Litvinenko the tools of the trade. He got a British passport for trips abroad – not in his name, of course, but under an as-yet-unrevealed pseudonym. MI6 also
In fact, Litvinenko’s bank statements tell us a lot. They give a picture of a typical, health-conscious family (purchases from The Natural Choice), with one child and a car. The Litvinenkos were living at 140 Osier Crescent, a terraced house of yellow brick with a small balcony anda parking spot. The modern estate is in Muswell Hill, in the north London borough of Haringey.
The bank statements root the Litvinenkos in their area. There are debits of £5.40 from Transport for London in East Finchley and Highgate – Litvinenko’s regular off-peak travel-card. Visits too to The Children’s Bookshop in Muswell Hill. And Japanese food: Yo! Sushi at Gatwick Airport and Itsu, Litvinenko’s favourite restaurant in Piccadilly Circus. The odd small sum of money comes in from time to time – a £75 payment from the David Lloyd centre, where Marina taught a kids’ class in ballroom dancing.
One regular credit entry is unusual, though.
On the 26th of each month, Litvinenko received an anonymous payment. It appears on the statement simply as ‘Transfer’, from an unnamed bank account. The account ends with the digits ‘3698’. The sum in sterling is always the same: ‘2000.00’. The paying organisation appears – one might think – to be rather bashful.
The sum of £2,000 found in among the groceries and trips to Tesco came from the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), also known as MI6.
British intelligence didn’t recruit Litvinenko in Moscow. Nor was he ever a spy in Russia: his career in the KGB and FSB involved detective work against criminals, not intelligence. When he arrived in the UK at the end of 2000 seeking political asylum, Litvinenko told Home Office officials truthfully: ‘I didn’t work in intelligence and I didn’t work against England.’ He added: ‘I have as yet had nothing to do with British intelligence.’
According to Marina Litvinenko and Alex Goldfarb, Litvinenko began working for MI6 in 2003, some two years after he fled to London. The secret service agency put him on its payroll the next year. In Britain, he was never a full-time agent.
Instead, Litvinenko worked for the agency as an expert adviser. MI6 consulted him on Russian organised crime in Europe, with Litvinenko travelling to various European countries, especially Spain, but also to the Baltic states, Italy and Georgia, assisting their law-enforcement efforts. He spent more time away on ‘business trips’. He continued his journalistic work but kept a lower profile.
In line with its long-standing policy, the British government has neither confirmed nor denied that Litvinenko was an MI6 employee. Its file on Litvinenko hasn’t been made public. We don’t know who hired him. Or if Sir John Scarlett – MI6’s prickly then chief, known by the initial ‘C’ – ever perused Litvinenko’s personnel record.
Scarlett knew about Moscow agents. He had been involved in the operation to recruit Gordievsky, the UK’s most prized defector. Scarlett was fluent in Russian and lived in Moscow in the 1970s. In 1994, Scarlett, by this point Moscow station chief, was expelled from Russia in a political row.
Marina Litvinenko says she knew of her husband’s undercover job. After all, she says, how else might Alexander explain the mysterious £2,000-a-month payments? She didn’t know details. She was uncertain if Litvinenko worked for MI5 or MI6, the numbers a source of confusion.
MI6 gave Litvinenko the tools of the trade. He got a British passport for trips abroad – not in his name, of course, but under an as-yet-unrevealed pseudonym. MI6 also
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