A Russian whistleblower may have “talked to Britain’s spy agencies” before his mysterious death in November 2012, when he was possibly poisoned by a lethal fern, a coroner’s court has been told.



Alexander Perepilichnyy collapsed and died outside his luxury home in Weybridge, Surrey, after he had been out jogging. He was 44. Surrey police insist there are no suspicious circumstances surrounding his death. Previous hearings, however, have heard that faint traces of a rare and deadly Himalayan plant, Gelsemium elegans, were found in Perepilichnyy’s stomach.

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 Wednesday Hermitage’s lawyer, Geoffery Robertson QC, accused Surrey police of covering up vital information. The forces’s conduct was “entirely unsatisfactory,” he said, adding that some of the police’s legal submissions were “riddled with grammatical errors.”

Charlotte Ventham, acting for the police, rejected this. But she said at least 45 documents relevant to the case could not be made public. The force would be seeking to exempt them from an inquest due to start in February by applying for a public interest immunity certificate (PII), she said.



Robertson told the coroner, Richard Travers, that the application was highly unusual, and at odds with the police’s contention that this was a wholly unremarkable death. PII was normally only used in serious cases involving overwhelming issues of national security, or international relations, he said. Perepilichnyy “may have talked to Britain’s security services”, he added.

There was no detail on whether Perepilichnyy had indeed been in contact with MI6, or passed the agency evidence of possible high-level Kremlin corruption. But the case appears to bear increasing similarities with that of Alexander Litvinenko, a remorseless critic of Vladimir Putin, who was gruesomely poisoned in 2006 with radioactive polonium.

It emerged in pre-inquest hearings that Litvinenko was working for MI6 as a salaried consultant. In 2013 William Hague, then foreign secretary, applied for a PII certificate to prevent intelligence agency documents being revealed. Sir Robert Owen, chairman of the Litvinenko public inquiry, examined them later in secret. Owen’s report will be published on 21 January.

Like Litvinenko, Perepilichnyy had been receiving death threats from Moscow in the months before his death. On Wednesday Robertson said that the whistleblower – who escaped to the UK from Russia in 2009 – had taken out a massive £3.5m in life insurance policies. One of them was approved just eight days before he died.

An investment banker, Perepilichnyy managed the finances of some extremely well-connected Russian officials. They included Olga Stepanova, the boss of a Moscow tax office, and her husband Vladlen. The pair were allegedly involved in the $230m fraud. The Hermitage lawyer who uncovered the scam, Sergei Magnitsky, was himself arrested by interior ministry officials and beaten to death in prison in 2009.

Before Magnitsky’s death, Perepilichnyy had passed him bank documents implicating the Stepanovs. Perepilichnyy also passed them to Swiss prosecutors. The prosecutors opened a criminal case against the Stepanovs and froze their bank accounts. Robertson told the hearing that the Swiss had summoned Perepilichnny and Stepanov for a session of joint questioning, known as a “confrontation”. It never took place. Instead Perepilichnny dropped dead, Robertson said.

The coroner has recognised four “interested parties” in the case. They include Surrey police and Perepilichnyy’s widow, Tatiana. Both insist there was no foul play. Hermitage and the insurance company Legal & General believe Perepilichnyy was murdered. “This man was in danger of his life. There is overwhelming evidence,” Robertson pointed out.



A key witness at next month’s inquest will be Professor Monique Simmonds, a plant expert from Kew Gardens in south-west London. She is likely to be cross-examined on the results of her latest toxicology tests. They have yet to be made public. The tests have been much delayed because of difficulties in sourcing the plant, which only grows on hillsides in Asia.

Last year Simmonds found traces of an ion linked to the gelsemium plant, the most toxic of which is Gelsemium elegans. Both Chinese and Russian assassins have used the plant as a deadly weapon. Its last known victim was a Chinese billionaire, Long Liyuan, who died in 2011 after eating a dish of cat-meat stew believed to have been laced with the poison

The case was adjourned until 28 January.