Mario Scaramella met Alexander Litvinenko on November 1
Mario Scaramella, a witness in the Alexander Litvinenko case, was arrested in Naples on December 24. Mr. Scaramella met Litvinenko for lunch at London's Itsu sushi restaurant on November 1. Scaramella claimed that the purpose of this meeting was to warn Litvinenko that he and several other Russian exiles in Britain had been marked for death by a cabal of current or former members of Russia's security services. Scaramella claimed to have obtained this "enemies list" from his former KGB contacts. However, after Scotland Yard detectives interviewed the self-proclaimed expert on KGB espionage, they found many reasons to doubt his story, starting with Scaramella's claim that he had received a near-fatal dose of radiation. After extensive medical tests, Scaramella was released from a London hospital and has shown no symptoms of radiation poisoning. Italian police arrested Scaramella at the Naples airport when he arrived from London on Christmas Eve.
Scaramella worked as a consultant for Italy's Mitrokhin Commission
Like Litvinenko, Scaramella had a history of making sensational claims without providing evidence. Italian police are now questioning him about his charge that several prominent Italian politicians, including current Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, were paid informants for the KGB during the Cold War. Italian magistrates are investigating Scaramella to determine if he was involved in arms trafficking and divulging classified information he obtained while working for the Mitrokhin Commission. The Mitrokhin Commission was established in 2002 by former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to investigate Soviet spying on Italy and NATO countries during the Cold War.
Scotland Yard told the RIA Novosti news agency that there is no connection between Scaramella's arrest and their ongoing investigation of the Litvinenko case. Meanwhile, the Russian Prosecutor General's office has announced that it is investigating the exiled Yukos executive Leonid Nevzlin to determine if he had any connection with the Litvinenko case. Mr. Nevzlin currently resides in Israel after he fled charges of tax evasion and murder in Russia following the breakup of Yukos in 2004. The Russian Prosecutor General's office also said that it would once again seek to obtain the extradition of Nevzlin, Boris Berezovsky and other Russian oligarchs charged with serious crimes now living abroad. Nevzlin's lawyer has dismissed the charges against his client and other former Yukos executives as politically motivated.
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