Russian billionaire Boris Berezovsky met Russian investigators in London today to answer questions over the killing of ex-KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko.
A British security source confirmed the meeting had taken place with officers from London's Scotland Yard police headquarters putting questions to Berezovsky, on behalf of Russian officers who were present. "I agreed voluntarily to meet with the Russian investigators.
It was entirely my personal choice," Berezovsky, a vocal critic of President Vladimir Putin who has received asylum in Britain, said in a statement. "The reason I agreed to the meeting was because I do not want to give the Russian authorities any excuse at all to say that the UK did not cooperate and therefore they will not assist the UK."
Berezovsky said Chechen separatist leader Akhmed Zakayev had also agreed to meet the Russian prosecutors, and Litvinenko's wife Marina and friend Alex Goldfarb had refused. Berezovsky and Zakayev are wanted by Russian police on separate matters but British courts have refused Moscow's requests to extradite them.
Litvinenko published a Berezovsky-sponsored book accusing the Kremlin of blowing up apartment buildings in Russia to create a cause for war in Chechnya.
He died in a London hospital last year after being poisoned with a rare radioactive isotope. In a letter read out by friends after his death, Litvinenko accused Putin of being responsible for his death.
The Kremlin denies the accusation and Russia has launched its own probe. British prosecutors are considering whether to charge anyone for Litvinenko's murder.