London - Poisoned spy Alexander Litvinenko was paid up to £70 000 by MI6 for the names of Russian sleeper agents in Britain, a court heard on Monday.
The former KGB agent received a retainer of £2 000 every month for almost three years from the British intelligence services, it was claimed.
The public inquiry into his death was told how he also provided his MI6 handlers with information on organised crime gangs linked to the Kremlin until he was poisoned by Russian hitmen.
The spy died from acute radiation poisoning after his tea was laced with a lethal dose of polonium-210 at the Millennium Hotel in London in 2006.
Litvinenko fled Russia in 2000 after agents threatened to kill his wife and son, the court heard.
When he landed at Heathrow Airport he walked up to the first police officer he spotted and reportedly said: “I’m a KGB officer and I’m asking for political asylum.”
Litvinenko, known as Sasha, became a “marked man” in Russia after he held a press conference in 1998 claiming that the Kremlin had plotted to kill oligarch Boris Berezovsky. After a spell in jail he told his wife Marina to take a holiday with their son, Anatoly, to Spain.
The spy then slipped out of Russia into Georgia and flew on a fake passport to Turkey, where he was joined by his wife and son.
The inquiry at the Royal Courts of Justice heard that the family moved to a different city in Turkey every day because they thought Turkish agents were tipping off the Russians about their location.
They initially tried to claim asylum at the American embassy in Ankara, but were turned down.
The trio then boarded a plane to London, where they were granted political asylum and lived under the assumed surname of Carter.
Giving evidence on Monday, Mrs Litvinenko, 52, said: “Sasha said if (the Russians) arrested me I would never be able to leave prison. They would kill me... I had to decide if I want to save my family or if I was to make my own way back to Russia. My life and the life of my son was in danger.
“He said ‘They will put you in prison and I will not be able to protect you’.”
From 2004, Mr Litvinenko allegedly did “consultancy work” for the British and Spanish intelligence services, but did not work for them full-time.
Robin Tam, QC, counsel to the inquiry, said: “The allegation is that what Sasha was giving the British intelligence service was the names of Russian sleeper agents in the UK.” Mrs Litvinenko, a former dancer in Moscow, said she had no idea if this was true but confirmed that he was supplying MI6 with information on the Russian mafia.
Weeks before Mr Litvinenko died, the family were granted British citizenship. They received financial support from Berezovsky who gave them money for Anatoly’s school fees, Mrs Litvinenko said.
She added: “(Sasha) kept an English flag on the balcony during the football World Cup in 2006. He was very proud his son was British.”
The court also heard that months before his death, Mr Litvinenko had written an online article accusing Russian president Vladimir Putin of being a paedophile.
It featured a photograph of Putin kissing the bare stomach of a boy along with the headline “Kremlin Paedophile”.
Mrs Litvinenko said: “It was written in 2006 after everybody saw how Putin behaved when he met a little boy in a Kremlin tour group. He went under his T-shirt and kissed his stomach.”
The hearing continues.
Daily Mail