A murder probe has been launched into the death of Russian exile and Putin critic Nikolai Glushkov, who was found dead at his home in New Malden on Monday
Exiled critic of Vladimir Putin Nikolai Glushkov was murdered and then strung up to make it look like he committed suicide, senior sources claim.
The 68-year-old was found dead by his daughter, Natalia, at his suburban home in New Malden, south London on Monday night – just eight days after the nerve agent attack on spy Sergei Skripal.
Mr Glushkov was one of the last surviving members of an ill-fated circle of Russian exiles – led by Putin’s enemy Boris Berezovsky – who was also found dead five years ago.
A murder investigation was launched on Friday after a post mortem examination revealed he died of compression to the neck.
But the results show he died before he was strung up, suggesting someone wanted to make it look like suicide, reports The Sun.
A senior source close to the probe told the newspaper: ‘There was clearly an attempt to hide that fact.’
Investigators are believed to be looking into the idea it was a staged suicide.
Mr Glushkov’s friend Boris Berezovsky was found dead in his Berkshire home in 2013 and the death of another of their circle, Badri Patarkatsishvili, is also unexplained
The announcement of the murder investigation comes amid mounting tensions between the Whitehall and the Kremlin over the shocking chemical weapons attack in Salisbury.
Russia is set to expel British diplomats from Moscow in a tit-for-tat response to the UK’s expulsion of 23 staff from Moscow’s mission to London, as tensions worsen between the two nations.
A Scotland Yard spokesman said yesterday: ‘A murder investigation has been launched following the results of a post mortem into the death of 68-year-old Russian businessman Nikolay Glushkov. Mr Glushkov’s family has been informed.’
The spokesman added: ‘The Met Police’s Counter Terrorism Command, which has led the investigation from the outset, is now treating Mr Glushkov’s death as murder.
‘As a precaution, the command is retaining primacy for the investigation because of the associations Mr Glushkov is believed to have had.’
Mr Glushkov was found by his daughter, Russian businesswoman Natalia Glushkova
Mr Glushkov was jailed in Russia in 2000 and held at the notorious Lefortovo Prison for five years until being cleared of fraud and money laundering and freed.
He claimed political asylum in Britain and lived out of the limelight in suburban south London. However, at the time of his death he was preparing for a £90million High Court showdown with his former employer Aeroflot.
Mr Glushkov was being sued by the airline, which is 51 per cent state-owned, for the return of £90 million which it alleges he embezzled along with Boris Berezovsky, the anti-Putin oligarch who is thought to have committed suicide in 2013.
The Met Police said yes: ‘Mr Glushkov, a retired financial director, was a Russian national who had lived at that address for two years.
Police officers stand on duty outside the home of Nikolai Glushkov in New Malden, on Friday
Mr Glushkov was one of the last surviving members of an ill-fated circle of Russian exiles – led by Putin’s enemy Boris Berezovsky – who have died in suspicious circumstances (images from Friday)
‘At this stage there is nothing to suggest any link to the attempted murders in Salisbury, nor any evidence that he was poisoned.’
It comes as police and health officials have identified 131 people who could have been exposed to the nerve agent that has left Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in a critical condition.
Intelligence agencies are working on the theory that was hidden in Yulia Skripal’s luggage inside cosmetics or a gift and then opened in her father’s house in Salisbury around March 4.
While, last year, Mr Glushkov was handed a second eight-year sentence by a Russian court in his absence over the alleged theft from Aeroflot, where he was previously finance director.
Russia has not commented on the Met probe, but announced on Friday that Moscow has launched its own investigation into his murder and the attempted murder of Yulia Skripal.
The usually quiet street in New Malden, south London has been flooded with Scotland Yard counter-terrorism officers this week as a huge probe was launched into Glushkov’s death
Mr Glushkov’s former bodyguard this week revealed the extent of his worries over his safety and the measures they took to preserve his safety.
The minder told the Telegraph how Mr Glushkov had hatched an escape plan which included a hideaway should his life be put in danger.
He told the paper: ‘When we were informed things were a little tense, we were told to prepare a getaway for Glushkov.’
The bodyguard had also worked with Glushkov’s friend and former business partner Boris Berezovsky and said the exiles saw poison as ‘always a threat’.
The security guard said: ‘Boris [Berezovsky] spoke openly that the orders came directly from Putin to eliminate him and his friends.’
Forensics officers outside a house in New Malden which has been sealed off after the Russian businessman, a close friend of Putin critic Boris Berezovsky, was found dead
A police forensics tent has been set up outside his home in the London suburb of New Malden
Police are mounting a thorough investigation amid fevered talk of political assassinations
The blue-forensics tent is visible in the otherwise peaceful suburban streets of New Malden
Boris Berezovsky was said to have taken his own life after he was found strangled at his Surrey mansion in 2013, although Mr Glushkov was always among those who refused to accept that his billionaire oligarch friend killed himself.
Another of his close acquaintances, Georgian billionaire Badri Patarkatsishvili, 52, also died in mysterious circumstances five years earlier.
In that case, police investigated claims he was the target of an assassination plot but a coroner was told he probably suffered a heart attack.
Glushkov said shortly after close friend Berezovsky’s death in 2013: ‘You have the deaths of Boris and Badri over a short period of time.
‘Too many bodies are happening. I’d say this is a little bit too much. I don’t see anyone left apart from me.’
The Home Secretary has already ordered a fresh official inquiry into a number of other deaths in Britain that could be connected to Russia.
The murder probe comes amid a war of words between Russia and the UK after Theresa May announced she is expelling 23 of Putin’s spies
Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia are both critically ill in hospital after a nerve agent attack
The Russian Embassy announced yesterday that authorities in Moscow have launched their own investigation into both Mr Glushkov’s murder and Ms Skripal’s attempted murder
Officers are examining Mr Glushkov’s movements, telephone contacts and circle of friends, amid claims he remained worried by legal manoeuvres by the Russian authorities.
The investigation comes amid a breakdown in Anglo-Russian relationships after Theresa May announced Vladimir Putin’s state was behind a Novichok nerve agent attack on former double agent Sergei Skripal.
Mr Skripal, his daughter Yulia and a Wiltshire police sergeant, Nick Bailey, all remain in hospital following the attack.
Boris Johnson yesterday gave the clearest statement yet that the UK believes Mr Putin himself authorised the use of Novichok against the Skripals.
‘Our quarrel is with Putin’s Kremlin, and with his decision – and we think it overwhelmingly likely that it was his decision – to direct the use of a nerve agent on the streets of the UK, on the streets of Europe for the first time since the Second World War.’
But within minutes Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov hit back branding the remark ‘nothing but shocking and unforgiveable behaviour from the point of view of diplomacy’. He added: ‘Russia has nothing to do with this story.’
The huge clear-up operation in Salisbury continued on Friday as part of the Skripal investigation
The Army are handling contaminated evidence as the probe spreads into surrounding counties
Moscow has said it will retaliate imminently to Theresa May’s decision to kick out 23 Russian diplomats, and will expel UK officials.
Extraordinarily, the Russian ambassador to London claimed yesterday that the British authorities could have faked the poisoning of the Skripals.
Speaking to the Russian state-funded RT television, Alexander Yakovenko said it was ‘suspicious’ that information about the case, including photographs of the victims, had not yet been released.
Who was Nikolai Glushkov?
Nikolai Glushkov spent five years in jail in Russia before he was freed and claimed asylum in Britain
By David Wilkes for The Daily Mail
From a high-flying role at Russia’s state airline, to jail, and then being forced into exile in Britain, the trajectory of Nikolai Glushkov’s life all too chillingly reflects the perils of falling out of favour with Vladimir Putin.
Back in the 1990s, the debonair businessman Mr Glushkov worked for Aeroflot, where he held the title deputy director in charge of finance, and also for the oligarch Boris Berezovsky’s car manufacturing company LogoVAZ.
But after falling out with Putin, Mr Glushkov was jailed for five years on charges of money laundering and fraud.
Claims have since emerged that Mr Glushkov had discovered that the airline worked as a ‘cash cow’ to support international spying operations.
Crucially, too, he was also a close friend of Mr Berezovsky, who, of course, had helped Putin to power in 2000, but later turned on him, accusing him of running a gangster state.
In his book The Putin Corporation, author Yuri Felshtinsky relates a claim that – ‘on Putin’s instructions’ – if he wanted to obtain Mr Glushkov’s release, Mr Berezovsky was told he would have to renounce all political activity and sell all his media holdings, ‘everything, including the newspapers’.
Glushkov (right in recent years and, left, during his time in Russia) was jailed in absentia in Russia last year over allegations of financial irregularities
After serving his sentence and being released in 2004, Mr Glushkov was later handed another sentence for fraud, this time two years suspended, but then fled to Britain. He remained in the UK after being granted political asylum seven years ago.
For the last couple of years he made his home in New Malden, South-West London, in a suburban street where the average house price is £698,000.
There, he is believed to have lived alone and was regarded by neighbours as ‘a nice man’. One said the Russian used to give presents to their children at Christmas.
But while he lived quietly at home, Mr Glushkov increasingly became an outspoken critic of Putin in his forays into public life.
In 2011, Mr Glushkov gave evidence in a multi-billion pound High Court case brought by Mr Berezovsky against his former business partner and fellow oligarch Roman Abramovich, who has maintained a good relationship with Putin.
He said that he was told he would be killed shortly before he was jailed for financial crimes in Russia in 2000. He fled to England on his release and claimed political asylum
Many observers remarked that the case sometimes seemed as much an attempt to embarrass the Russian president as to hold Mr Abramovich to account.
Mr Berezvosky’s claim was rejected by the court and he withdrew from public life. Then, in March 2013, Mr Berezovsky, 67, was found hanged at his home in Ascot, Berkshire.
Suicide was suspected and police found no signs of a struggle, but a coroner recorded an open verdict into Mr Berezvosky’s death.
Mr Glushkov was close to Putin critic Boris Berezovsky, pictured
Mr Glushkov was among friends and fellow Russian exiles who were sceptical he had had committed suicide, saying in an interview that he was ‘definite Boris was killed.’
He also referred to the murder of former Russian spy and Putin critic Alexander Litvinenko, who was killed in 2006 when Russian assassins poisoned him with polonium, a highly radioactive metal.
‘Too many deaths [of Russian exiles] have been happening,’ Mr Glushkov said.
All the while, he himself was still being pursued by the Kremlin. Only last year he was convicted in absentia by a Russian court and prosecutors demanded an eight-year prison sentence for Mr Glushkov, claiming he had embezzled $122.5 million (£88 million) from Aeroflot.
They alleged he had conspired with Mr Berezvosky to carry out financial restructuring of the company and that the loans for this were then embezzled.
Friends of Mr Glushkov always saw him as a victim of politically motivated accusations. Now, in a tragic final twist, his life has abruptly ended at the age of 68.
How three Putin enemies were found dead in suspicious circumstances
Russian exile Nikolay Glushkov, 68, became the third of an ill-fated circle of Vladimir Putin critics to die in mysterious circumstances on Monday, when he was found dead at his home in New Malden, south-west London.
Glushkov, the right hand man to Boris Berezovsky – a one-time fierce rival of the Russian leader who died suspiciously in 2013 – may have been strangled to death in his own home.
The third, Georgian billionaire Badri Patarkatsishvili, 52, was found dead in his Leatherhead mansion in 2008, again under unexplained circumstances.
Mr Glushkov’s (left) friend Boris Berezovsky (centre) was found dead in his Berkshire home in 2013 and the death of another of their circle, Badri Patarkatsishvili (right), is also unexplained
At the time of Glushkov’s death he was preparing for a £90million High Court showdown with his former employer Aeroflot.
Mr Glushkov was being sued by the airline, which is 51 per cent state-owned, for the return of £90 million which it alleges he embezzled along with Mr Berezovsky.
Reports suggested Mr Berezovsky took his own life after he was found dead at his Berkshire mansion, although Mr Glushkov was always among those who refused to accept that his billionaire oligarch friend killed himself.
Despite chilling parallels with the attempted poisoning of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter barely a week earlier, detectives said at this stage there was nothing to link the two attacks.
There was also no evidence that the businessman was poisoned, the force said.
A murder investigation has been launched, led by the counter-terrorism command, who will retain primacy “because of the associations Mr Glushkov is believed to have had”, the Met said.
Mr Berezovsky was a friend of murdered spy Alexander Litvinenko and a thorn in the side of the Russian regime.