Article content continued

Litvinenko was murdered for trying to reveal Putin’s close links to organized crime and a cabal of crime lords who prop up his corrupt regime, it was claimed.

Queen’s counsel Ben Emmerson, representing the Litvinenko family, said the trail behind the “act of unspeakable barbarism” led directly to the Russian president’s door.

Emmerson said that Russia was a “Mafia state” where the “intimate relationships” between the Kremlin and Russian organized crime syndicates around the world were so close as to be “effectively indistinguishable.”

Litvinenko could even identify crimes committed or authorized by Putin personally, it was claimed.

The seeds of hatred that Putin had towards his former agent which would eventually lead to the murder were first sown in clashes more than eight years before, the inquiry was told.

Putin was a “ruthless and deadly enemy” and “we find Mr. Putin’s fingerprints as clearly as we find the traces of nuclear material in the forensic evidence,” he said.

In his opening statement, Emmerson said: “Vladimir Putin should be unmasked by this inquiry as nothing more or less than a common criminal dressed up as a head of state.”

“The startling truth which will be revealed by the evidence in this inquiry is that a significant part of Russian organized crime is organized directly from the offices of the Kremlin. Vladimir Putin’s Russia is a Mafia State.”