Russian allegations against the main shareholder in oil giant Yukos that he is connected to the poisoning of ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko are an attempt to deflect responsibility from the true perpetrators, a friend of the dead spy told AFP.
"It's total nonsense... accusing (Leonid) Nevzlin, The Kremlin is just trying to cover up," said Alex Goldfarb, who was also Litvinenko's former spokesman, speaking by telephone from New York.
The Russian public prosecutor's office said on Wednesday that it had information which might help clear up Litvinenko's murder involving Nevzlin, a former close associate of jailed Yukos chief Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
"All evidence seems to show that the two Russians (Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitri Kovtun, who met with Litvinenko on the day he fell ill) are responsible" for the former spy's poisoning, Goldfarb said.
The accusation "just raises the suspicion that the government is trying to hide its responsibility," he added.
Nevzlin and billionaire Russian businessman Boris Berezovsky, the former exiled in Israel, the latter in London, "are the two person that can stand up to Russia, they have the money," Goldfarb said.
Nevzlin was one of the closest associates of Khodorkovsky, who is serving an eight-year prison sentence for tax evasion, a conviction largely suspected to have been politically engineered by the Kremlin.
Goldfarb said he was not close to Nevzlin.
Litvinenko, a former member of the Russian secret services and a fierce critic of the Russian government from his exiled home in London, died on November 23, three weeks after he felt the first symptoms of poisoning by the radioactive substance polonium-210.
AFP
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