Concerns grow over Russian’s mystery death

Reuters/London

A serious crime unit has taken over an investigation into the mysterious death of a Russian anti-corruption whistleblower, police said yesterday, in a move local media said suggested it might have been a murder.

Alexander Perepilichny, 44, moved to Britain three years ago and had been helping Swiss prosecutors investigate a Russian criminal group suspected of being involved in major tax fraud.

 Police have not been able to explain why he died, even after two autopsies, and have ordered toxicology tests on the body.

Yesterday, police said the investigation had been handed over by local police to a team of specialist detectives working for a regional major crimes team.

“It’s an unexplained death,” said a local police spokesman. “They are waiting for the toxicology report which will take a number of weeks. ... (It) will be the next major milestone in the case.”

Asked if detectives were treating the case as a possible murder, the spokesman said: “At the moment the death is unexplained, so they are still keeping their mind (open) and following up on a number of lines of inquiry”.

One theory being explored, the Guardian newspaper reported, is that he could have been poisoned in a similar fashion to former spy Alexander Litvinenko, who died in London in 2006 after drinking tea laced with radioactive polonium-210.

The Daily Telegraph newspaper also reported there were “concerns that he could have been murdered”.