A Russian whistleblower who collapsed and died in mysterious circumstances may have been the victim of a “reprisal killing” after he exposed alleged fraud at the heart of the Russian state, a coroner’s court has heard.
Alexander Perepilichnyy was found dead outside his luxury home in Weybridge, Surrey, in November 2012 after he had been out jogging. Police initially said there were no suspicious circumstances surrounding his death. But in May it emerged traces of a rare and deadly plant poison may have been present in his stomach when he died.
A pre-inquest hearing on Thursday heard that Prof Monique Simmonds, a plant expert at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, south-west London, was trying to obtain samples of the lethal gelsemium plant from India. Her initial findings suggested that Perepilichnyy had ingested the poison – known to have been used by Chinese and Russian assassins – shortly before he died.
But the court in Woking heard that Perepilichnyy’s widow, Nataliya, bitterly disputed this version of events and believes her husband died from natural causes. She was not in court but her lawyer, Alexandra Tampakopoulos, said: “There is no direct evidence to support the contention that Mr Perepilichnyy was murdered.”
Perepilichnyy was instrumental in exposing a massive alleged money laundering ring involving the Russian mafia and the Russian state. He provided details of an alleged $230m (£148m) fraud carried out by senior Russian tax officials. The money was allegedly stolen from taxes paid by Hermitage Capital, a hedge fund run by the US-born financier Bill Browder.
On Thursday Hermitage successfully argued that it should be an “interested party” in the case, despite opposition from Perepilichnyy’s widow and Surrey police. The coroner, Richard Travers, agreed that it should be represented ahead of a full inquest due to start on 21 September.
Hermitage’s lawyer, Henrietta Hill, said that in the months leading up to his sudden death Perepilichnyy’s name had been found on a hit list recovered from Chechen assassins in France. He had, she said, received death threats and warnings from other figures, allegedly sent by Moscow.
An investment fund manager, Perepilichnyy had managed the fortunes of some well-connected Russian officials. He fled to the UK with his family in 2010 after losing them substantial sums in the financial crash. The same officials were allegedly involved in the arrest and death in prison in 2009 of Sergei Magnitsky, a Hermitage lawyer who had uncovered the massive fraud.
In Britain, Perepilichnyy passed details of the fraud to Hermitage during a series of meetings in London. In the months before his death he took out a major life insurance policy with Legal & General, approved just eight days before he collapsed.
In court Hill claimed there were “compelling parallels” between the deaths of Magnitsky in Moscow and Perepilichnyy in Surrey. She pointed to the murders of other Russians living in exile in Britain, including Alexander Litvinenko, poisoned in 2006 and the subject of a public inquiry that ended last week.
“The presence of the potential of gelsemium in the deceased’s body is a matter of the gravest concern. We have an overwhelming concern to establish how the man died and under what circumstances,” Hill said, adding: “It’s part of a pattern of reprisal killings.”
Perepilichnyy’s widow has made no public comment on her husband’s death. However Tampakopoulos accused Hermitage on Thursday of exploiting the case and peddling “lazy stereotypes” which suggested every Russian exile who drops dead is murdered. “They are playing to the gallery to pursue their own agenda,” she complained.
Browder, Hermitage’s chief executive, has been highly critical of Surrey police. He has accused them of bungling the evidence – toxicology tests were only carried out three weeks after Perepilichnyy’s death – and of ignoring the wider Russian context. The police’s lawyer, Dijen Basu, dismissed these complaints as unfounded and unfair.
Over the next few weeks Prof Simmonds is expected to compare samples taken from the toxic plant with the “spectral fingerprint” found in Perepilichnyy’s stomach. There are several different varieties of gelsemium, the most lethal being gelsemium elegans. She will also test samples taken from urine as well as from the spleen, which was frozen and stored in a London hospital.
Days before he died Perepilichnyy made a trip to Paris, booking into one hotel but staying in another. It is not clear who he met there. The court was told that French detectives are now investigating his movements in the capital.
Perepilichnyy would not be the first apparent victim of gelsemium. In 2011 a Chinese billionaire, Long Liyuan, died after eating a dish of cat-meat stew believed to have been laced with the poison. The next pre-inquest hearing will be held on 4 September.
