On the day that Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned, Arsenal were hosting CSKA Moscow for the second leg of a Champions League group stage match. The game ended a goalless draw with the home side left frustrated by a series of squandered chances.
Watching the game that evening from his box above the stands was Boris Berezovsky, the billionaire tycoon who had fled Russia six years earlier and been given political asylum in Britain. Two boxes over and former KGB officer Andrei Lugovoi was also watching the game. As he would later claim, Lugovoi had travelled from Moscow the day before to watch his home team in action.
But Lugovoi also had business to attend to in London. In the few days he spent in the capital he met with a number of friends and associates, including his former boss Berezovsky, with whom he shared a bottle of wine at the oligarch’s offices in Mayfair.
More well known is his meeting with Litvinenko.
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