A former KGB officer has said British prosecutors are seeking his extradition over the murder of Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko in 2006, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday.
Dmitry Kovtun, a former business associate of Andrei Lugovoi, an ex-spy accused by British authorities of killing Litvinenko, said Russian prosecutors had informed him that they had received an extradition request for him from the Crown Prosecution Service.
Litvinenko, who was a former KGB agent who had moved to Britain and a fierce critic of former Russian President Vladimir Putin, died in a London hospital in 2006 after being poisoned with radioactive polonium-210.
The murder has strained relations between Russia and Britain, and Moscow's continued refusal to extradite Lugovoi has led to a series of tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions.
"Representatives of the [Russian prosecutors'] Investigations Committee informed me this morning they had received a letter from UK prosecutors accusing me [of involvement in the murder] and demanding my arrest and extradition," Kovtun told the Financial Times.
The Prosecutor's Office in Moscow was not available for comment.
The Crown Prosecution Service said it could "neither confirm nor deny the story," according to the paper.
Kovtun was suspected of the murder after leaving a trace of the polonium isotope in his ex-wife's Hamburg apartment but German prosecutors dropped the case in 2010, saying there was not enough evidence to convict him.
Both Kovtun and Lugovoi have denied any involvement in Litvinenko's death and in November last year Russian prosecutors said Lugovoi was himself a victim of attempted poisoning.
