Andrei Lugovoy has a pastiche of Paul Delaroche’s painting The Execution of Lady Jane Grey in his Moscow office. It depicts President Putin guiding the jailed oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky to the chopping block watched by a smiling Roman Abramovich as the executioner.

Mr Lugovoy, 40, has long operated in the shadowy intersection of business and politics in Russia, first as a Kremlin bodyguard and later with his own private security company.

He probably knew how it felt yesterday to have his neck on the line after the decision of the Crown Prosecution Service to seek to charge him with the murder by poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko.

What the CPS left unsaid was whether Britain believed that Mr Lugovoy was on official business as the alleged executioner.

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BACKGROUND

• Lies and the spies: I must have justice

• Shadowy ex-KGB major takes cover

• Of course the Russians did it. They’re the experts

• The Litvinenko File

• Litvinenko was told that he was marked for death

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• Claim by claim: Lugovoy's theories examined

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The former major in the KGB was relaxed and friendly when The Times first met him days after the news last November that Litvinenko had been poisoned with radioactive polonium-210. Mr Lugovoy was keen to explain how he knew the dissident former security service officer and what they had discussed in their now infamous meeting at a London hotel on November 1.

Yesterday, clearly agitated and surrounded by four bodyguards, Mr Lugovoy repeatedly refused to talk to The Times. A Times photographer had his camera snatched and the pictures deleted.

With Mr Lugovoy was Dmitri Kovtun, his business partner and childhood friend who also met Litvinenko in London. Mr Kovtun also refused to discuss the case, partly because he remains under investigation by German police over polonium traces found in places he visited in Hamburg shortly before he flew to London.

Mr Lugovoy later told Russian news agencies that the charge against him was politically motivated. He insisted: “I did not kill Litvinenko, have nothing to do with his death and can prove with facts my distrust of the so-called evidence collected by Britain’s justice system.”

He claimed to be preparing sensational statements that would “radically change the interpretation of the events surrounding certain personalities of Russian descent that have taken place in the UK in recent years”.

The intricate web of relationships between Mr Lugovoy, Litvinenko and the exiled Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky dates back to the chaos of Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Mr Lugovoy was a bodyguard in the KGB’s Ninth Directorate, responsible for protecting Kremlin officials in the 1990s, including the Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar and Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev. He left government service and became head of security at the Russian Public Television channel ORT, then controlled by Mr Berezovsky. He told The Times last year that he became friends at the time with Litvinenko, who was working with the oligarch.

Litvinenko had been a lieutenant-colonel in the Federal Security Service (FSB), the restyled KGB, until he held a sensational televised press conference in November 1998 to allege that his superiors had ordered him to assassinate Mr Berezovsky. Mr Putin was in charge of the spy agency at the time. Litvinenko was arrested for alleged corruption soon after exposing the alleged plot and placed in the FSB’s infamous Lefortovo prison. He was cleared twice by a court and fled Russia as a third case was being prepared after threats were made against his family.

He arrived in London in 2000 with his wife Marina and son Anatoly and was supported financially by Mr Berezovsky, who said that he owed his life to him. Litvinenko became a British citizen shortly before his death. Mr Lugovoy also remained close to the billionaire and was jailed in 2001 for his part in an attempt to free the former deputy director of Aeroflot, Nikolai Glushkov, from custody on fraud charges. Mr Glushkov was a friend of Mr Berezovsky, who is wanted in Russia on fraud charges.

Mr Berezovsky, who was given asylum in Britain in 2003, initially supported Mr Putin’s rise to power but became one of his fiercest critics. He financed a documentary based on a book by Litvinenko in 2002 that accused the FSB of a series of bombings in Russian apartment buildings that killed 300 people in September 1999.

Mr Putin, then Prime Minister, had blamed Chechen terrorists. He began a military campaign in Chechnya that helped to sweep him into the Kremlin on a wave of patriotic fervour in the presidential election six months later. Unlike others linked to the oligarch, Mr Lugovoy remained in Russia after emerging from prison and built up businesses selling soft drinks and security services. He is now said to be worth £100 million.

He said that he had lost contact with Litvinenko until he received a telephone call from him early last year with the offer of cooperation on a business venture involving a British company keen to work in Russia.

He introduced Litvinenko to Mr Kovtun last October when the three ate sushi together at the Itsu restaurant in Piccadilly. Litvinenko met the Italian investigator Mario Scaramella at the same restaurant two weeks later.

Mr Scaramella warned him that his name was on a death list compiled by the killers of the investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya. Litvinenko went from the meeting to see Mr Lugovoy and Mr Kovtun at the Millennium Hotel. He fell ill that day. The restaurant was the initial focus of the investigation.

Mr Lugovoy has said that Litvinenko requested the meeting to discuss a business proposal, and that he had been in London with his wife and three children only to watch the Champions League match between Arsenal and CSKA Moscow.

He and Mr Kovtun said that they ordered tea before the meeting, but could not recall if Litvinenko drank any. Scotland Yard later established that a teapot at the hotel was the source of the polonium-210.

Nine detectives travelled to Moscow in December, interviewing Mr Lugovoy and Mr Kovtun. They were particularly interested in Mr Lugovoy because aircraft on which he travelled between Moscow and London were found to be contaminated with radiation, as well as rooms in two London hotels where he stayed and a chair in Mr Berezovsky’s office that he visited on October 31.

Russia is pursuing its own investigation. A spokeswoman held open the prospect of a trial in Russia. Mr Lugovoy insists on his innocence.

Key suspicions

Five key ingredients emerged from the investigation into the plot to murder Alexander Litvinenko (Michael Evans, defence editor, writes). All point the finger of suspicion at the Russian intelligence services, specifically the FSB, the federal security service, successor to the domestic arm of the KGB. Although Andrei Lugovoy is the only suspect to be charged, investigators believe that an organisation with a considerable degree of sophistication and experience, acting with statutory authority, may have been behind the poisoning:

Motivation: Litvinenko had been a thorn in the flesh of the Russian Government for a long time. He co-wrote a book in 2003 called Blowing up Russia, which accused the FSB of being responsible for bombing apartments in Moscow in 1999. He was also investigating the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist and critic of Moscow’s military action in Chechnya. He blamed the Russian authorities for her death

Methodology: the use of polonium-210, a highly radioactive substance indicated official backing. It was generated only in well-guarded nuclear plants

Form: the KGB had a record in the Cold War of developing poisons for assassinations. There is still a poison laboratory in Moscow called Kamera (chamber), run by Department 12 of Directorate S of the SVR, the Russian foreign intelligence service

Sophistication: the operation was carried out with ruthless efficiency, although traces of polonium-210 were found in London, indicating that an experienced organisation was behind the planning

Legislation: last year the Russian Duma passed legislation that enabled President Putin to use secret services to eliminate extremists anywhere abroad who pose a threat to the Russian Federation. A second law sanctions action against any Russian accused of libellous statements about his Government

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