Andrei Lugovoi, the man charged by the UK with murdering  Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko, on Thursday claimed the British intelligence had been involved in his death.
Speaking at a press conference in Moscow, he said UK security services had in the past tried to recruit him, and that Litvinenko was working for MI6.
Lugovoi claimed the British were trying to make him a scapegoat for the dissident’s death by turning him into a “Russian James Bond”. When asked  whether he had any proof for his allegations that the British government was, in effect, responsible for Litvinenko’s death, Lugovoi replied: “I do.”
Litvinenko was poisoned by the radioactive isotope polonium-210, dying in a London hospital on November 23 last year. Lugovoi said Britain was trying to recruit Russian citizens as spies to find compromising material on the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.
The UK had sought “compromising information” on Putin from him during business trips in previous years, he claimed, adding: “They are selling British citizenship ... it is sold in the same way that Chinese shirts are sold in the market.”
The former KGB bodyguard, now a businessman, accused Britain of being careless in embracing Russian exiles such as Boris Berezovsky.
He alleged that both Litvinenko and Berezovsky were MI6 agents.
When a reporter asked him who had killed Litvinenko, he said: “It is the matter of the prosecutors. I don’t know who killed him.” Lugovoi did not give a precise date for when he said UK intelligence had attempted to recruit him. The Foreign Office declined to comment on his claims.
Last week, the Crown Prosecution Service said there was enough evidence to charge Lugovoi with the murder of Litvinenko.
Lugovoi rubbished the British version  saying: “They’re trying to portray me as a Russian James Bond who jumps  into a nuclear reactor and poisons his Russian friend and children and wife.”