Blowing Up Russia by Alexander Litvinenko Page A

allowed into the courtroom. As his employer, the FSB gave Vorobyov a positive character reference that was included in the case materials. In his final address, Vorobyov declared that the case against him had been fabricated by parties who wished to blacken the name of the FSB and his name as a freelance agent of the special service. Vorobyov described the sentence as an insult to the special agencies. Later, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation reduced Vorobyov s sentence to three years (most of which Vorobyov had already served by that time). In late August 1999, Vorobyov was released, despite the fact that Akimov and the investigators believed that he had been involved in the terrorist attacks of 1996. The FSB had demonstrated yet again that it would not abandon its own agents and would eventually obtain their release.

Tskhai also learned about the involvement of Lazovsky s group in the summer explosions from one other source, Sergei Pogosov. In the late summer and early fall of 1996, an operational source reported that a certain Sergei Pogosov was living in the

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center of Moscow on the Novyi Arbat, not far from the bookstore Dom Knigi and the Octyabr cinema in a huge penthouse apartment with a floor area of 100 or 150 square meters. His firm s office was located in the ground-floor apartment of the same block.

According to information received, Pogosov was directly linked with Lazovsky and his gunmen and financed many of Lazovsky s undertakings. Pogosov s telephones (home number 203-1469, work number 203-1632, and mobile number 960-8856) were tapped and monitored for two weeks on the instructions of the First Section of the Antiterrorist Center (ATTs, the former UBT) of the FSB. From conversations overheard, it became clear that Pogosov was paying Lazovsky s legal fees and was preparing a large sum of money to pay bribes for his release.

This operational information was relayed to Tskhai, who personally obtained permission from the Public Prosecutor s Office for a search of Pogosov s flat and office as part of the criminal investigation into Lazovsky s case. A few days later, the search was carried out jointly by the Twelfth Section of MUR and the First Section of the ATTs of the FSB of the Russian Federation (Platonov s former subordinates), lasting almost right through the night. Under Pogosov s bed, a sack was found containing 700 thousand dollars. No one tried to count the rubles, which were lying everywhere, even in the kitchen in empty jars. Cocaine was also found in the apartment (Pogosov s girlfriend was a drug addict).

The search at Pogosov s office on the ground floor turned up several mobile phones, one of which was registered to Lazovsky. Pogosov and his girlfriend were taken to the police station, but that very day a member of the Moscow UFSB drove round to the station and collected them. The police did not confiscate the money. The tax police said that it had nothing to do with them and didn t even bother to turn up. No criminal case was brought in connection with the discovery of cocaine. Apparently nobody was interested in Pogosov or his money.

Knowing the way things were done in the Russian agencies of coercion, Pogosov expected that the people who had come to search his apartment would just take him away and kill him, so he attempted to save himself by giving a written undertaking to cooperate (under the pseudonym of Grigory). Pogosov told one of the operatives about Lazovsky s connections in the Moscow UFSB and the kind of activity in which he was involved.

Pogosov had heard from Max that his brigade was not a group of bandits, but more like a secret military unit, that Lazovsky handled tasks of state importance, and there were people like him in every country. Pogosov said Lazovsky was a state assassin who eliminated people according to instructions, and organized acts of sabotage and terrorism.

Lazovsky himself only carried out instructions, and he got those from the