Press Association
Friday 10th February 2012
Boris Berezovsky has won £150,000 High Court libel damages over claims on a Russian TV broadcast about the radiation poisoning murder of Alexander Litvinenko.
The 63-year-old Russian businessman, who was granted political asylum in the UK in September 2003, had sued over an April 2007 broadcast on the state-owned TV channel RTR Planeta, which is available by satellite in the UK.
During the hearing in London, Mr Justice Eady heard that the Russian Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (RTR), which has never suggested that what it broadcast was true, had declined to take part in the proceedings.
It left Vladimir Terluk, whom Mr Berezovsky alleged was the silhouetted figure called Pyotr featured in the programme, "to face the music on his own", unrepresented by lawyers.
The judge, who tried the case without a jury, said: "I can say unequivocally that there is no evidence before me that Mr Berezovsky had any part in the murder of Mr Litvinenko. Nor, for that matter, do I see any basis for reasonable grounds to suspect him of it."
The court had heard that the cornerstone of the programme as a whole was to accuse Mr Berezovsky of the 2006 London murder of Mr Litvinenko. The motive was said to be that Mr Litvinenko was a witness to a conspiracy in 2003 to avoid Mr Berezovsky's extradition and to obtain his political asylum by procuring false evidence from Mr Terluk that there was an FSB security service plot to kill Mr Berezovsky.
It was said on the programme that Mr Berezovsky had been party to threats to Mr Terluk's life.
The judge rejected Mr Terluk's claim that the alleged plot to procure from him false evidence was true, saying: "I am driven to conclude that the central allegation that is directly attributable to Mr Terluk in the programme is false."
He concluded: "I see no evidence at all of any risk to Mr Terluk's safety and welfare originating with Mr Berezovsky or his entourage."
He said the allegation was calculated to put Mr Berezovsky's refugee status at risk.
