A top Russian official implicated in the radioactive poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko has denied any involvement in the crime, calling the inquiry into the Russian’s death in London a “theatre of the absurd”.

Lawyers for Litvinenko’s widow, Marina, alleged that Viktor Ivanov, head of Russia’s powerful anti-drugs agency and a longtime associate of Vladimir Putin, could have ordered the hit.

The inquiry’s report, which will be released on Thursday morning almost 10 years after Litvinenko died of polonium-210 poisoning in 2006, is expected to find that the Russian state carried out the assassination.

The court heard evidence that Andrei Lugovoi, a former KGB agent and now a Russian MP, and Dmitry Kovtun killed Litvinenko. But the question of who exactly in the Russian government gave the order is harder to answer.

Speaking to the Guardian from the Moscow headquarters of the Russian Drugs Control Agency, Ivanov said the six-month inquiry was a “well-crafted political order”. “It’s lies from start to finish”, he said.

He admitted, however, that his deputy, Nikolai Aulov, had been in regular contact with Gennady Petrov, a top Russian mafia boss living in Spain. The inquiry heard that Litvinenko may have been murdered for exposing links between top Russian officials and Russian organised crime figures in Spain. In a recent court document, Spanish prosecutors alleged that Aulov had called the gangster 78 times.

Ivanov said that after he asked Aulov to explain himself, his deputy said he did know Petrov – having initially helped put him behind bars in 1992 and later using him as a source. “He doesn’t deny that there were contacts but not the kind of contact that they are claiming. Petrov provided operationally useful information on a number of topics. The rest is made up,” said Ivanov.

Alexander Litvinenko is pictured at the intensive care unit of University College Hospital in London. Photograph: Natasja Weitsz/Getty Images

The other key piece of evidence against Ivanov heard by the inquiry was a damning due diligence report about his past, co-authored by Litvinenko. The report, prepared for an unnamed western company, allegedly scuppered a major business deal involving the Russian official. Two months after it was written, Litvinenko was killed.



The court heard that Litvinenko had initially approached Lugovoi for help with the report; the two men had reconnected in 2005 and worked together doing freelance research for western companies planning to invest in Russia.

Lugovoi was unable to produce much information on Ivanov, so Litvinenko turned to Yuri Shvets, a former KGB agent who fled to the US. Shvets compiled a report that accused Ivanov of longstanding ties with organised crime. It also painted a portrait of him having a mediocre intellect and vindictive personality.



Ivanov said he had read excerpts of the report online and declared it “absolute nonsense”, denying he had ever met or spoken to Vladimir Kumarin, a mafia boss named as a close associate in the report.



“They [Litvinenko and Shvets] cannot be witnesses because they did not witness these events. They didn’t live in St Petersburg, they were not there, they didn’t know me and I didn’t know them.”

Ivanov also doubted that there could have been a potential deal involving him and a western company. He was the chairman of the board of directors of Aeroflot, the Russian airline, and Almaz-Antei, a defence concern, at the time. However, he said he knew of no negotiations with foreign companies at that time. “There was no deal, it’s completely made up,” he said.

The report on Ivanov claims that in the 1990s, his alleged criminal dealings had protection from Putin, who worked in the St Petersburg mayoral office at the time.



Shvets told the inquiry that Litvinenko had passed a copy of the report to his erstwhile associate Lugovoi, who possibly then showed it to Ivanov. Shortly afterwards Lugovoi was back in London with Kovtun, apparently on a mission to assassinate Litvinenko with polonium.



Ivanov insisted he had never met Lugovoi in person. He said he met Litvinenko once, in 1998, in his office at the FSB headquarters in the Lubyanka building. Ivanov was head of the FSB’s internal security department and Litvinenko was in the process of being fired.



“They said Litvinenko is in the waiting room. I said I didn’t ask to see him, but they said he’s asking for a quick meeting, and so I received him. His psychological state was pretty borderline, he talked a lot. He suggested to me that I should meet with [tycoon Boris] Berezovsky. I told him I don’t need that, and quickly saw him out. The meeting lasted between three and five minutes.”



Ivanov, who like Putin rose through the ranks of the KGB said his closeness to the Russian president was often exaggerated.



“I’ve known him for a long time, but now I’m just one among many. Believe me, nothing more than that. I know the appropriate distance to keep, he has to deal with problems of a different scale,” he said. He speaks to Putin in person only about once a year, he said.

Ben Emmerson QC, acting for Litvinenko’s widow, told the court the report contained “staggeringly serious accusations” against Ivanov and Putin, but Ivanov said investigators had not reached out to him, smearing his name without asking for his side of the story.

“I was not going to rush to London, but the court could have sent a request for information, and I would have been happy to give video evidence, but we received absolutely nothing from them,” he said.

Kovtun and Lugovoi have refused to give evidence to the inquiry despite being asked. Kovtun asked in March to testify by video link but then changed his mind and withdrew the request. The inquiry was set up by the home secretary, Theresa May, and chaired by a high court judge, Sir Robert Owen.