Probe into Russian whistleblower 'killed by deadly toxin' requires 'reinvestigation' following Navalny ruling
Alexander Perepilichny handed over documents to Swiss prosecutors in 2010 outlining the involvement of senior Russian officials in a $230 million fraud
Calls have been made for Britain to reopen its investigation into the death of a Russian whistleblower who died with similar symptoms to opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
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Businessman Alexander Perepilichny died in 2012 while he was jogging near his home in Surrey.
Mr Perepilichny handed over documents to Swiss prosecutors in 2010 outlining the involvement of senior Russian officials in a $230 million fraud.
Tests following his death found a toxin from the Chinese flowering plant Gelsemium in his stomach - this can trigger cardiac arrest when ingested.
However, Surrey Police maintains that "no identifiable toxin was found and that remains the case".
The UK and its allies on Saturday pinned the blame for Mr Navalny’s death on the Russian state, adding he was likely poisoned using a dart frog toxin.
In light of this, Bill Browder, who helped Mr Perepilichny expose the fraud, has called for the UK to reopen the investigation into his death.
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He told the Telegraph: “We were trying to determine what type of poison was used on Alexander Perepilichny in 2012, and with this new information on the Navalny poisoning, it has many similarities.
“It’s a shame that the law enforcement authorities in Surrey were so quick to conclude that it wasn’t a suspicious death and therefore [did] not preserve the evidence. It would have been nice to know what really killed him.
“In light of this new evidence in the Navalny case and all the suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of Alexander... I would hope that the UK would reopen the case that they so negligently closed for ‘lack of crime’."
A 2018 inquest into his death found that he had likely died of natural causes, caused by Sudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome, but it could not be ruled out that he was poisoned.
It also found that crucial evidence had been lost or disregarded, and Surrey Police had failed to check CCTV in the area where Mr Perepilichny had collapsed.
Unconfirmed reports from 2017 suggest that US intelligence officials passed documents to MI6 outlining that it was likely that Mr Perepilichny was "assassinated on direct orders from Putin or people close to him".
The announcement about the cause of Mr Navalny's death comes two years after he died in a Siberian penal colony.
Analysis of samples from his body revealed the presence of a toxin called Epibatidine, which is produced by wild dart frogs in South America.
The UK and its allies said there was no innocent explanation for it being there, as it is not found in Russia, and is generally only produced by the frogs in the wild.
The five European nations that called out Russia for using the toxin have already reported the Kremlin to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons after accusing Moscow of breaching its conventions.
The Russian embassy in London has denied Moscow was involved in Mr Navalny’s death and described the announcement as “feeble-mindedness of western fabulists”.