The government can keep secret “super-sensitive” documents from Britain’s spy agencies that might shed light on the mystery death of a fugitive Russian, the high court has ruled.



Justice Cranston upheld an application by the home secretary, Amber Rudd, who is refusing to release documents from MI5 and MI6 concerning Alexander Perepilichnyy, who collapsed and died in November 2012 outside his home in Weybridge, Surrey.

Surrey police have said there was nothing suspicious about the death of the 44-year-old, who had been out jogging. They were unable to find a cause.

However, in 2015 it emerged that traces of a rare and deadly plant poison, Gelsemium elegans, were found in Perepilichnyy’s stomach. The poison has been used by Russian and Chinese assassins, a hearing was told.

The judge said he could not see “cogent or solid reasons” for rejecting the government’s application for “public interest immunity” or PII. He said he agreed with the home secretary’s view that disclosing the intelligence files would cause “real and significant damage to national security”.

Cranston added that the position of the coroner, Richard Travers, who had brought the application to see the secret evidence was “now untenable”. But the government had refused, merely showing him a “gist” or vague summary of its contents.

The ruling comes after an unusual one-day hearing at the high court. The judge heard some of the case in public, before considering the unknown secret material in a closed session.

Travers will now be replaced by another coroner who has gone through direct vetting and is security-cleared, the judge indicated. The new coroner will be allowed to see the “sensitive material” before a three-week inquest takes place in March, he added, at a court in Woking.



The judgment is likely to dismay several of the participants in the inquest who opposed the home secretary’s secrecy application. They have pointed out that the official position is baffling. The government is refusing to release sensitive files in the case of a man who – according to Surrey police – wasn’t murdered.

The Guardian argued that there was an overwhelming public interest in transparency, given the fact that several high-profile Russians have died in recent years on UK soil. The judge said the newspaper’s submissions were “invaluable” in resolving what he called “this very difficult application”.

The ruling comes on the 10th anniversary of the murder in November 2006 of the Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko, killed with a radioactive cup of polonium tea. It follows a warning by Andrew Parker, the head of MI5, that Russia is aggressively using propaganda, espionage and subversion across both Europe and the UK.

In the run-up to his death, Perepilichnyy received many death threats. He revealed details of a $230m (£160m) fraud carried out by a Russian crime gang with links to the Kremlin. The money was stolen from taxes paid by the investment company Hermitage Capital to the Russian treasury.



Perepilichnyy shared this information with Swiss prosecutors. They had frozen several Swiss bank accounts involved in the fraud. Shortly before he died, Perepilichnyy – who had fled to the UK from Moscow – took out life insurance worth £2m.

Perepilichnyy’s stomach contents were thrown away after an inconclusive autopsy.

