Dmitry Kovtun, one of the businessmen questioned by Russian and British investigators probing the poisoning of former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko, describes himself as a consultant helping Western companies to break into the Russian market.

Kovtun and his business associate Andrey Lugovoy, who both met Litvinenko on the day he fell ill, 1 November, have given two interviews to Russian media outlets since Mr Litvinenko’s death three weeks later. On both occasions Lugovoy dominated the pair’s exchanges with their interviewers, which focused on their contacts with Litvinenko, but some light was shed on Kovtun’s background.

On 24 November, one day after Litvinenko died in a London hospital, Lugovoy and Kovtun told the Moscow radio station Ekho Moskvy in a live studio interview that they were cooperating with British officials examining the case.

Asked to introduce himself to listeners, Kovtun said he had graduated from military school in 1985, before graduating along with Lugovoy from the prestigious army college, the Moscow Command School, the following year.

Lugovoy recalled that the two of them had grown up in the same apartment block from the age of 12, while their fathers served in the Soviet Ministry of Defence.

Kovtun told Ekho Moskvy that he spent the rest of the 1980s serving in Czechoslovakia and then Germany. Following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, he remained in Germany, living there for a total of 12 years. He married a German national, although they are now separated.

He said he retains a German residence permit, although he no longer conducts any business in Germany.

He now works in consulting, helping Western companies to access Russian markets. It was for this reason, he explained, that he was interested in meeting Litvinenko, who had “serious contacts with serious English companies” keen on operating in Russia. Kovtun confirmed that he had first been introduced to Litvinenko by Lugovoy on 16 October.

Lugovoy provided a similar account of Kovtun’s background in an interview with the mass-circulation Moscow daily Moskovskiy Komsomolets, published on 27 November and given on the same day as the Ekho Moskvy appearance.

Kovtun, who also spoke to the paper, said that he had flown into London from Germany on the day he and Lugovoy met Litvinenko. He had been in Hamburg extending his residence permit, he explained. Lugovoy chipped in with the information that Kovtun owns an Irish wolf-hound.

The Ekho Moskvy interview also featured Vyacheslav Sokolenko, another business partner of Lugovoy and Kovtun. Sokolenko told the radio station that he works for Devyatyy Val (Ninth Wave), a group of private security firms based in Moscow.

Kovtun added that he works for the same group. A 6 December report from AFP said the two men run the company.

A Russian-language website bearing the name of Devyatyy Val reveals the group’s slogan as “Spirit of Perfection”. The group comprises three security firms: Stolitsa-Shchit (Capital Shield), Garde-Iks and Orion, as well as the Lentus consultancy and a training facility.

The website says the company was founded in 1993, since when its clients have included US film actor Robert De Niro. During the Ekho Moskvy interview Kovtun named the well-known journalist Sergey Dorenko as another of the group’s clients.

Devyatyy Val is also a member of a Moscow-based association of private security firms, Devyatichi (Men of the Ninth). The association takes its name from the KGB’s ninth department, which protected top Communist Party officials during the Soviet era.

Lugovoy served in this unit from 1987 until the fall of the Soviet Union.

Popularity: 1% [?]