Alexander Goldfarb: "Slava showed up with Berezovsky in London sometime in 2001-2002."
Photo: Alexander Techinsky
|
 |
They Called Him Agent Slava
Alexander Goldfarb, head of the Boris Berezovsky-funded Foundation for Civil Liberties, was asked about the life and activities of Vyacheslav Zharko by Vlast analytical weekly correspondent Alek Akhundov.
People from the CIA Said They Weren't Interested in Litvinenko
Are you acquainted with Vyacheslav Zharko?
I used to meet him in Berezovsky's circle in 1998-1999. They called him Agent Slava because he had supposedly been in a special division of the domestic intelligence service. He introduced himself as Slava Petrov then. He worker for Berezovsky, as did several other former members of the special services, including Litvinenko and Lugovoi, who were engaged in security. I saw Slava in Berezovsky's airplane when he took me to Karachaevo-Cherkessia. [Berezovsky was elected to the State Duma from that republic in 1999.] Slava went there with Berezovsky several times as his assistant or consultant. He did not hide the fact that he was a former agent. Slava showed up with Berezovsky in London sometime in 2001-2002.
Zharko claims that the worked with Berezovsky in Kiev. He also said that Berezovsky financed the Orange side in Ukraine, including Yulia Timoshenko. Is that true?
It is a complete lie that he had any relation to the Orange Revolution or the financing the Orange side or the Maidan. But that doesn't mean that Berezovsky did not finance the Ukrainian opposition. Berezovsky really did finance groups close to Viktor Yushchenko. His main contact people were [leaders of the presidential staff Roman] Bessmertny and [David] Zhvania, to whom he gave millions of dollars. But Yulia Timoshenko was not close to it. That was a different camp. Apparently Zharko dragged Yulia Timoshenko into it on some political order.
Does anything Zharko says correspond with reality?
We have to separate the truth from the untruth and from what we cannot evaluate because of lack of evidence. Zharko's claim that he worked with the English special services belongs to the last category. Maybe he did. Maybe not. We will never know. In any case, I see no reason why they shouldn't have recruited him. Western intelligence is not much different from the Russian and it could pounce if someone came in and offered information himself. And he could have talked big to them. What is known is that Litvinenko, Berezovsky and I did not work with the English special services. We had little to offer them, since we didn't know any secrets. That was understood about Litvinenko from the day in 2000 [after Litvinenko fled Russia] when I took him to the American embassy in Ankara. People from the CIA talked to him and said that they weren't interested in him. But Sasha told them one interesting thing that is now widely known. He told them how they killed Dudaev. And nothing else. So the Americans didn't take him.
At his famous press conference, Andrey Lugovoi accused you of selling political refuge in England. How much do you charge?
As a foundation [i.e., the Foundation for Civil Liberties], we really have worked with a limited number of people from countries where they were threatened with retribution to get them political refuge. And we plan to continue to do so. The question of whether or not to help someone who asks us is decided on an individual basis and only after that person has contacted the appropriate authorities to request refuge. We do not charge money for that. On the contrary, we spend the foundation's money for those purposes. We pay legal fees and give grants for loving expenses at first. We have had no more than ten such clients, including Litvinenko and Zakaev. More than $1 million has been spent on legal expenses in the trial on his extradition to Russia. Elena Morozova, victim of the explosion of the house on Guryanov St. on Moscow in 1999. Nikita Chekulin, who was a provocateur, and others who names we don't reveal. But we never contact immigration authorities.
There Was Nothing to Pay Sasha For in Spying
Let's return to Zharko. He, like Lugovoi, claims that Litvinenko was a British intelligence agent and names the names of people Litvinenko contacted on a tip. He mentioned John Callahan, Martin Flint, Kenneth Philips and several others. Do those names mean anything to you?
Martin Flint is a real people, you can find him mentioned in the Internet. I don't know anything about the rest. Flint is one of the co-directors of a rather large security firm called RISC Management. He really did work in MI5 for 20 years, but that's not intelligence; it's counterintelligence. The British foreign intelligence is called MI6. After his retirement, Flint worked in the petroleum sector for ten years. He has various duties connected with security in the company. Sasha really was acquainted with him and really received contracts from him and orders for consultative services but, again, as far as I know, that has no connection with intelligence. There was nothing to pay Sasha for in the field of spy activities. He didn't know anything, as everyone says.
What did he do, if he didn't know anything?
I know for sure that Litvinenko provided consulting services to private security firms that work in the area of commercial security. Besides that, he provided outside consultation to the law enforcement of various countries. For example, he worked with the Spanish police and helped them when they hunted Russian criminal groups in Spain. He knew what he was doing there, he was a specialist. I don't know who they arrested in Spain in the end, but I know that Sasha was in that country several times last year. He didn't talk about it. I repeat that that had no connection to intelligence. He had simply nothing to say to MI6.
Are the topics Zharko mentions as of interest to the English – the Russian companies YUKOS and TNK-BP, BP itself, the large Kovykta natural gas deposit, the telecommunications business – random?
It's a classical story. Any problem can be attributed to the schemes of foreign intelligence as they did under during Stalin's terror. What they give Sasha to say depends on just how topical it is. I am convinced that somewhere within The Other Russia, or maybe opposition parties from Limonov to the Union of Right Forces, and inside oil companies, there are the same Slava Zharkos, who one fine day will stand up and say, “I was working for MI6 or the CIA.” And it will turn out that they really did. And then all those organizations will be smeared. It is a classic method of operation for the KGB. It's been like that since they were fighting Trotskyism.
Zharko says that Litvinenko was driven to work for the special services by his straitened material circumstances. Did Berezovsky cut back his support that much?
At first, they paid him ˆ5000 per month, by the very end it was ˆ1500. But that Sasha's standard of living was not effected. He worked, went on business trips, gave consultations and he had good connections not only in Spain. He went to Estonia, in Georgia he helped deal with bandits who had kidnapped some businessman. He was in Bulgaria and Italy, where he met Maria Scaramella. But what Zharko says about Sasha's tip to Istanbul and his meeting with Arabs in untrue. He was not in Istanbul. I was, but I never met with any Arabs. Sasha did about the same thing as he had in Russia – combating organized crime. I should say that the fact that he found work was the reason Berezovsky cut back his support. The more money he made, the less we gave him. But it wasn't like what they are writing in the newspapers abut his suffering and supposed living conditions. We continued to pay part of the expenses for the house – the telephone, for example. It was absolutely normal that he found work. That's what everyone does who knows anything. Everyone from Vladimir Putin to your humble servant agrees that Sasha didn't know any secrets and was of no value to intelligence. Just like Slava Zharko, by the way.
Berezovsky Trusted Him as He Trusted Lugovoi
Zharko is but the latest person from Berezovsky's circle to create a scandal. How is that possible?
Berezovsky trusted him as he trusted Lugovoi. You understand, before a certain moment, there was no division between “us” and “them.” After Berezovsky became the target of a special operation, which happened when went abroad and fought with the Russian authorities, it was decided either to take advantage of the old agents who had already found their way into his circle, or to recruit new ones. It seems that Lugovoi and Zharko had completely different functions. Why did Zharko have a different name? Maybe he was on some assignment from the very beginning. I heard that he was in custody for some time in 2002-2003 in connection with a criminal case. But that information has not been confirmed. I don't know what kind of offer they could have made Slava, but he was always a very nice guy. If someone goes to the KGB and says, “Guys, forgive me please, but a demon deceived me and I went to work for the English,” they don't usually show him on TV and make him keep working. In any case, the story that Zharko suddenly saw Lugovoi on television and went to confess and was shown on TV doing it can't stand up to criticism.
Zharko says he simply got out of the game at the right time. What special operation are you talking about?
Someone who did about the same thing as Zharko, that is, wrote reports from publicly accessible information for a Western firm, is Igor Sutyagin. It got 15 years for it. For having contact with some firm in London and writing reports on military questions. Publicly accessible information, as is well-known, is not secret. Why is Zharko still free, when he did the same thing as Sutyagin for several years, knowing that he was working for a supposed Western intelligence agency? Most likely it was an operation, during which an agent by the name of Slava Petrov was sent into the circle of Berezovsky and Litvinenko. He found a way to the English by himself and now he is being used in a propaganda campaign intended to reduce the negative effect of the murder of Litvinenko by smearing our campaign to work with Western intelligence. And that is completely untrue and made out of whole cloth.
Alek Akhundov
All the Article in Russian as of July 09, 2007
|
|
|
