Free A Very Expensive Poison by Luke Harding Page B

who had the ear of Putin and who was the subject of Litvinenko’s 2006 report. The dossier logs seventy-eight phone calls between Aulov and Petrov and describes Aulov as ‘one of the most important persons for Petrov’. In 2008, the petition says, Petrov asked an associate to get Aulov to put pressure on Russia’s new customs chief. The mafia boss wanted to facilitate port shipments for his group.
    The court document seeks to charge twenty-seven people, including Vladimir Reznik, a deputy in Putin’s ruling United Russia party and chair of the Duma’s financial markets committee. Petrov was spotted on the island of Mallorca with Reznik. Spanish police raided Reznik’s Mallorca mansion, allegedly a gift from the gangmaster.
    It was an extraordinary picture – mobsters and ministers; money-washing and gun-running; the Kremlin not so much a government as a well-entrenched international crime group with truly big ambitions.
    The accused Russian politicians deny wrongdoing. Reznik told Bloomberg his relationship with Petrov is ‘purely social’. Meanwhile, Spain’s prosecution of Russian mafia suspects ran into various legal snafus. The suspects would hire Spain’s best lawyers; often they got bail. The strategy to behead them, though, was working.
    All of this was thanks to Litvinenko. He made clear to ‘Jorge’ that he was willing to testify in court against Putin and Ivanov, spilling everything he knew about Putin’s alleged links with the Tambov gang.
    This would be some court case. And enough reason for powerful people in Moscow to want Litvinenko silenced.

3
First Deployment
    25 Grosvenor Street, Mayfair, London, Summer–Autumn 2006
    ‘Are you guys from the KGB?’
    AUSTRALIAN HOTEL GUEST TO LUGOVOI AND KOVTUN, 17 OCTOBER 2006
    There is something surreal about Mayfair. It is London’s wealthiest district, a dark-blue square on the Monopoly board and home to successive influxes of the international super-rich. Arabs rich from oil, Greek shipping tycoons, African dictators – all find a home here, washed in by a global tide of credit crises, coups and recessions.
    In Mayfair’s Hanover Square, boys and girls in red uniforms play games at the end of the school day, among plane trees and an exotic palm from the Canary Islands. It’s all rather English pastoral. The girls sport straw boaters. Around the square are boutiques, florists, a library and pigeons; nannies chatting in Russian sit on park benches.
    North of the square you find Grosvenor Street and a row of fashionable eighteenth-century Georgian townhouses. This was once the abode of earls, lords, admirals and the odd poet. Now there are the understated brass plaques of commerce. It’s not entirely clear what many of the businesses based here do. Hedge funds? CorporatePR? Wealth management? The location radiates prestige, reliability, trustworthiness.
    And a little mystery. If London is the spy capital of the world, Mayfair is its centre. It is the traditional home of private intelligence companies. There are casinos, luxury car showrooms and exclusive nightclubs. Nearby is Pall Mall. Here, in gentlemen’s clubs, the establishment comes together. Defence officials, spooks and ministers meet to do deals and exchange gossip. The Houses of Parliament are down the road.
    Most of those who work in private intelligence have at some point been on the other side. They include exspies, army officers and former Scotland Yard detectives – sometimes ones prepared to bend the law.
    Their work includes providing business intelligence, investigating employee fraud and supplying personal protection. Another lucrative market is due diligence. Companies looking to expand internationally need information on prospective partners, especially in jurisdictions with lousy records of governance, like Africa, the Middle East and the ex-Soviet Union.
    Litvinenko visited Grosvenor Street often. He would arrive here on foot, walking past the Bentleys, Porsches and Ferraris,