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Four people were hospitalized in Hamburg Monday, on suspicion they had been contaminated by polonium, the same radioactive substance that killed former Russian FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko, The New York Times reported.

The four had contact in Germany with Russian businessman Dmitry Kovtun, who spent four days in Hamburg in late October before flying to London, where he and two other Russian men met at a hotel with Litvinenko on Nov. 1. Litvinenko fell ill later that day from radiation poisoning and died several weeks later, Xinhua news agency reports.

German prosecutors have started a criminal investigation of Kovtun, who is reported to be in a Moscow hospital. They suspected he may have illegally handled polonium and could also have left traces of it after being contaminated himself.

Police confirmed Monday that evidence of polonium was found on a seat in a BMW that picked up Kovtun at the Hamburg airport on Oct. 28. There were also traces in a second car he used.

While in Hamburg, Kovtun slept for two nights in the apartment of his former wife. Police said they detected radioactive traces on a child’s car seat, and in two bedrooms, suggesting that the ex-wife, her two children and her boyfriend had been contaminated.

The four are not sick, according to Ulrike Sweden, a police spokeswoman, and it will take a few days of tests to determine whether they ingested the substance. She said there was no public health danger.

Andrei Lugovoi, another key figure in the case, was questioned in Moscow on Monday by Russian and British detectives, Itar-Tass news agency reported.

The British investigators arrived in Moscow on Dec. 4. They and their Russian colleagues interviewed Kovtun last week.

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