Did a secret spy sting lead to assassination?

A few hours before he died, Badri Patarkatsishvili stood on a pavement in Old Broad Street flanked by Boris Berezovsky, Yuli Dubov and Nikolai Glushkov, men who could fairly be described as the Three Musketeers of Russia's opposition in exile. The group had just held a fivehour long meeting at the City law office of Lord Goldsmith, the former attorney-general, who acts for them.

As the oligarchs waited for their drivers, one of those present remarked it was almost a pity the KGB were not around to witness such a concentration of President Vladimir Putin's foes. The men laughed, got into their cars and Patarkatsishvili was driven to his large country house near Leatherhead in Surrey.

He died there at 11 o'clock last night, some weeks after telling British police he believed an assassination attempt would be made against him. Berezovsky said today: "I have lost my closest friend."

A post mortem examination this afternoon may reveal precisely how he died, but whatever the result one element of the affair will not change: Patarkatsishvili and his allies believe London has become the killing ground of choice for their enemies.

The former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko, who died an appalling death after being poisoned by radioactive Polonium 210 in November 2006, was murdered by Russian agents after he allied himself with Berezovsky, Scotland Yard believes. Attempts to extradite his alleged killer from Russia have failed and are at the centre of diplomatic tensions some have characterised as a revival of the Cold War.

Scotland Yard has also confirmed its officers arrested a would-be assassin suspected of being on his way to murder Berezovsky in Park Lane. Berezovsky's close friend and business associate Glushkov, who ran Aeroflot, and Dubov, a businessman and writer, also believe they have good reason to watch their backs.

Inevitably, the question they are asking themselves today is whether their friend Patarkatsishvili was murdered, and if he was - who is next?

Patarkatsishvili, 52, was a Georgian who made most of his estimated £6 billion fortune in the rush to privatise Russian state industries during the 1990s. Like a number of other oligarchs from the period, he fell foul of President Putin, but it is his involvement in politics in Georgia that is likely to generate most suspicion.

Indeed, when British detectives investigating his death search for a motive in the murk that surrounds the power brokers in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, they may find they are spoilt for choice.

Just before Christmas, a leading figure in London's Chechen community contacted Patarkatsishvili and told him Georgian officials had tried to engage the notorious Chechen terrorist Uvais Akhmadov to murder him. The instigator of the plot was identified as a highranking officer in the Georgian Interior Ministry.

An audio tape alleged to have been made of a conversation between this official and Akhmadov notes that Patarkatsishvili "is very frequently in London", and that his death was to be blamed on Russia, not the Georgian government.

According to Patarkatsishvili's people, Akhmadov declined the contract. But if there was a real attempt to secure an assassin's services, did someone else accept?

Patarkatsishvili was once a staunch supporter of Mikheil Saakashvili, the Georgian president who took over the country in the so-called Rose Revolution in 2003. At that time, Patarkatsishvili was the most powerful man in Georgia. He founded Imedi, a television network, in 2002, and his interests included Dinamo Tbilisi football club, a bank, a mineral-water plant and the fabled Wedding Palace, a historic building he restored and made his headquarters.

For a while, Patarkatsishvili and Saakashvili worked together, but in February 2005, amid rising tensions within the government, prime minister Zurab Zhavania was found dead, apparently from carbon monoxide poisoning caused by a faulty gas heater. Zhavania's family claimed he had been murdered and there was a suspicion he had been placed in the gas-filled room while he was unconscious.

Patarkatsishvili then accused the government of involvement in the murder of a journalist who had been critical of the regime. His television station made frequent attacks on the president and the government. For his part, President Saakashvili accused Patarkatsishvili of attempting to seize power for himself, using his television station as a political tool. Patarkatsishvili responded by selling a stake in the station to Ruper Murdoch's News Corporation.

Patarkatsishvili did want power. He ran for president in last month's elections but his chances - never considered promising - were probably fatally damaged by what his supporters say was a classic undercover sting mounted by the Georgian government.

By its very nature, the affair is veiled in secrecy, with the ever-present threat of disinformation, but a version which had already been sanctioned by Patarkatsishvili was passed to the Evening Standard by Lord Bell, the London PR executive who acts for him and Berezovsky.

According to this account a colonel in the Georgian Interior Ministry asked Patarkatsishvili's campaign manager in Tbilisi to arrange a meeting in London. He said he had evidence that the government was planning to fake the January election.

The colonel - who is named in the document seen by the Standard - allegedly flew to London and went to Patarkatsishvili's home in Leatherhead where the Georgian tycoon had been spending time with his wife and two children.

On 23 December, the interior ministry officer told Patarkatsishvili, the document alleges, that the police had been instructed to put down any demonstrations after the election and that a force of 7,000 men had been placed under his control. There would be "provocations" it was said to justify using live ammunition against protesters. According to the document, the colonel said he would avoid bloodshed and order his men to arrest the interior minister and help change the regime, in return for $100 million. Patarkatsishvili said he would pay the money, after it was clear he had acted to prevent violence.

An edited tape of their conversation, made secretly by the colonel, was played on Georgian state media two days later, on Christmas Day. Patarkatsishvili had been trapped into incriminating himself in what was described as a plot to stage a coup. A warrant was issued for his arrest and he was unable to return to Georgia to fight the election. The poll, heavily criticised by opposition leaders, gave him just over seven per cent of the vote. But he continued his campaign against the government. At the time of his death he was considering legal moves against the regime in Tbilisi.

The fact that an operation described by Patarkatsishvili's friends as a classic secret service sting took place in London tends to confirm the capital's role as the centre of operations for dissidents from the former Soviet Union. Loosely grouped around Berezovsky, they include former oligarchs, businesspeople and a well-known journalist. All take careful security precautions but Patarkatsishvili himself noted that even with more than 100 bodyguards, he did not feel safe.

The question his friends want the police to look at carefully is whether his enemies could have penetrated his security, especially in the light of the sting operation mounted against him before Christmas. Although he appeared fit and well, he seemed to suffer breathing difficulties at one point during the long meeting with lawyers yesterday.

Did he suffer a heart attack? The post mortem will probably answer that question but even if that is revealed as the cause of death there will be those who wonder whether it was brought on by natural causes. A number of poisons can induce heart failure; some (well-known in the darker circles of the espionage business) are almost impossible to detect.

Whatever emerges from the efforts of the pathologist and the current police investigation, Berezovsky and his friends are unlikely to sleep easy tonight.