November 2, 2007 (LPAC)--On the anniversary of the death of Alexander Litvinenko, Andrei Lugovoy and his business partner, Dmitri Kovtun, gave a press conference in Moscow, during which they claimed that Litvinenko may have been involved in the nuclear black market while on the payroll of MI6. Kovtun was with Lugovoy for a business meeting with Litvinenko in London.

According to The Times' report, Kovtun, who appeared to have aged considerably in the past year, said that doctors had found "a rather large amount of polonium" in his body after Litvinenko's death. He claimed that his death could have been an accident.

"It's perfectly possible that his death was just an unfortunate accident - and Britain's MI6 intelligence service found itself in a ridiculous situation," Mr. Kovtun said.

Lugovoy added: "This is a serious possibility that needs checking. What if Litvinenko grew careless with polonium? How was his former boss [in MI6] supposed to explain his death?" Lugovoy accused Litvinenko of being a paid MI6 agent and said that Scotland Yard was ignoring evidence that contradicted the case against him. Continuing, he said there had been no trace of polonium-210 on an aircraft that had brought him and Mr. Kovtun to London for their meeting, but, traces were found in the office where they had met Litvinenko and on their seats in the plane that brought them back. Lugovoy said that this demonstrated that the polonium-210 had originated in Britain and not Russia, as Scotland Yard claimed.

"We wanted British police to pay attention to this, as the traces lead not from Russia to Britain but vice versa," he said. In addition a Sim card in a mobile telephone handed to Lugovoy by Litvinenko, which the former said was part of an MI6 attempt to recruit him, had also tested positive for polonium-210. "There has always been the invisible presence of the British MI6 around this scandal and they will do everything to mislead the investigation. They can jump up and down as much as they want and scream that the British justice system is the best in the world, but whenever the British spy agency is involved there can be no talk of objectivity and justice."