Here are photographs of names that keep coming up in the investigation of Alexander Litvinenko's murder, or victims of previous poisonings and suspicious deaths. To read the biographies of these individuals, click on their names.
Vladimir Bukovsky Born-1942, Russia. A notable former Soviet dissident, author and a human rights activist. He was one of the first to expose the use of psychiatric imprisonment against political prisoners in the USSR. He spent a total of twelve years in Soviet prisons, labor camps and in
psikhushkas, forced-treatment psychiatric hospitals used by the regime as special prisons. Together with a fellow inmate in Vladimir prison, psychiatrist Semyon Gluzman, Bukovsky coauthored
A Manual on Psychiatry for Dissidents , to help other dissidents to fight the authorities' abuses. In his autobiographical novel
And the Wind Returns, Bukovsky describes how he was brought to Switzerland handcuffed.
Stephen Curtis Stephen Curtis, the British lawyer who was made managing director of Yukos Oil’s parent company, Group Menatep, last November, became an informant of Britain’s National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS) just days before dying in a helicopter accident (March 2005). Curtis, a close confidant of jailed former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky, drew up structures for Yukos’s offshore oil trading business back in 1999 that helped the company avoid taxes. Russia’s Tax Ministry has presented Yukos with a bill of $3.5 billion for unpaid taxes in 2000 and resulting fines.
Of particular interest to investigators, following his death, were a small group of Russians who, in the 1990s, had begun to seek his services. They were among the first of a new breed of rich Russian businessmen to emerge from the sell-off of state assets under President Boris Yeltsin. In return for supporting his election campaign, they'd been given places at the front of the queue when the country's major assets were privatized. In a highly controversial deal known as "loans for shares", and a series of rigged auctions, they acquired assets worth billions of dollars at a fraction of the real price. Embracing capitalism with fervor, 22 of these businessmen quickly rose to the top, owning between them 40% of the Russian economy. The term "
Russian Oligarch" was born.
Paolo Guzzanti Born-1940, Rome, he is an Italian journalist and politician. He was previously a member of the Italian Socialist Party. As a journalist he worked for
L'Avanti!, La Repubblica and
La Stampa. He also hosted the first season of TV show Chi l'ha visto?. Currently he is vice-director of Silvio Berlusconi's
Il Giornale and editorialist for
Panorama, also owned by Berlusconi. He was elected to the Italian Parliament for Forza Italia. From 2002 to 2006 he was president of the Mitrokhin Commission, a parliamentary comission which was entrusted of investigations about the role of KGB in Italy.
Lecha Ismailov A rebel field commander, Ismailov died in Moscow’s Lefortovo prison after drinking tea with two FSB officers (2002). The symptoms were similar to those that Alexander Litvinko experienced, following Polonium-210 poisoning: Ismailov’s attorney described them as he couldn’t speak or move, his skin peeled off in pieces from his head and hands, hair falling out, organ failure and internal hemorrhaging. Ismailov (
the Beard) had worked closely with the warlord Ruslan (Hamzat) Gelayev. Both hailed from the same town of Komsomolskoye in southwestern Chechnya. As the leader of the "Shaykh Mansur Special Task-Force Regiment," Islamov was captured in 2000 following the siege of Grozny and was sentenced to nine years in prison for seizing hostages and organizing an armed group.
Suleyman Kerimov Born-1966,Derbent, Dagestan, Russia. He is a member of the State Duma of Russia. He is a member of the LDPR, and is Deputy Chairman of the State Duma's Committee on Sports. He has a degree in construction from the Dagestan Polytechnic Institute and in economics from Dagestan State University. Kerimov is a billionaire and known as "Russia's Richest Civil Servant", listed # 72 on Forbes' World's Richest People List. Kerimov is thought to control Nafta-Moskva, a successor to the Soviet oil trader Soyuzneftexport and SWIRU Holding AG of Luzern, and has built up his wealth investing in Gazprom and Sberbank. Nafta-Moskva owns 5% of Sberbank and 20% of BINBank. He is an enigmatic figure who claims to eschew publicity but advertizes a lavish lifestyle in the media.
Mujahedeen Khattab Born-1969, Saudi Arabia. Differing reports on how Khattab was assassinated (2000) include: dying five minutes after he opened a booby trapped letter containing a poisonous agent, given to him by a trusted aid, and secondly, that he was given poisoned food in a private party. Khattab was reported to be the most important Mujahedeen commander killed since Russian troops launched their latest campaign against the Chechen freedom struggle two and a half years ago. Khattab was an amateur movie producer, with the rather morbid habit of videotaping all of his battles.
Mikhail Khodorkovsky Born -1963, Russia. He is a Russian businessman, a former Komsomol activist who became one of Russia's most powerful tycoons. He was later convicted for fraud and tax evasion and received a 9-year sentence. In 2004, it was reported that Khodorkovsky was the wealthiest man in Russia, and was the 16th wealthiest man in the world, although much of his wealth evaporated following the collapse in the value of his holding in the Russian petroleum company YUKOS. At the time of his arrest, he was considered the most powerful of the Russian business oligarchs. In 1996, he was named Chairman of the Executive Board and CEO of YUKOS Oil Company. One of his first strategic decisions, the acquisition of the Eastern Oil Company, immediately made YUKOS, Russia's second-largest oil producer. He has been recognized as a leader in the transformation of Russian business practices and is committed to the principles of good corporate governance and full transparency."
Khodorkovsky Press Center
Evgueni Limarev Born-1965, admits to links with Russian intelligence agencies but denies reports that he was ever a listed KGB officer. He fled Russia in 1999 after falling out with influential politicians and businessmen in Moscow, living most recently in Cluses, France. He has denied being the sole source of the information which Mario Scaramella used as a pretext to arrange the lunch, November 1, 2006 with Alexander Litvinenko in London. “I was just one of many sources for that information,” he said. "Scaramella used me to distract attention from himself and because he was scared."
Leonid Nevzlin Born 1960, Russia. He was considered Khodorkovsky's number two man, Nevzlin took care of security issues and the group's political relations. Elected senator in the Federation Council of Russia in 2001. In 1988, as a 28-year-old computer programmer in Moscow, Nevzlin answered a newspaper advertisement for a job and met Mikhail Khodorkovsky; became a founding shareholder of what later become Group Menatep, the banking, trading and oil empire. With a warrant out for his arrest, he fled to Israel to escape the fate of his fellow Yukos shareholders, Khodorkovsky and Lebedev, both of whom are in a Moscow prison awaiting trial on theft and fraud charges. He was granted citizenship in 2003. Now leading the campaign to get his partners released and funding the political opposition to President Vladimir Putin.
Roman Tsepov Born-1962, Russia, general director of the Baltik-Eskort private security firm, was poisoned (September 2004) with a large dose of medicine used for treating leukemia patients, a heavy metal that is among experimental chemicals, whose access is severely restricted. The murder resembled that of Ivan Kivelidi, the influential businessman apparently poisoned to death along with his secretary in 1995. Tsepov’s sphere of influence was very wide, from pharmaceuticals and protection service to ports, tourism, shipping, insurance, and even the mass media. Tsepov kept in touch with many
siloviki, from Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliev to the head of the presidential security service, Vladimir Zolotov. He was in well with deputy presidential administration chief Igor Sechin and even Vladimir Putin himself. Tsepov actively used contacts (in the UBOP, the anti-organized crime directorate) to resolve business issues and also carry out delicate errands for a number of very highly placed persons. Tsepov used his connections to lobby for the appointments of Interior Ministry and FSB (Federal Security Service) officers. It was precisely because of this that one of his nicknames within certain circles was
the Producer.
