All language subtitles for Once.Upon.a.Time.in.Londongrad.S01E06.WEBRip.x264-ION10

(GRUNTS)

OK. I can't get it in closer.

How's that?

REPORTER: A murder investigation
being launched

into the death
of another Russian on British soil.

(BIG BEN CHIMES)

♪ CHESS: Blood Money

REPORTER: He told his uncle
a fortnight before he died,

"If anything happens to me
in the next two weeks,

it won't be an accident."

(RAPPING IN RUSSIAN)

BILL BROWDER: London is
levitating on a sea of dirty money.

If you deal with somebody

who has
a very suspicious track record,

some day it will come back
to haunt you.

(POLICE SIREN WAILS)

I read all those seven articles
published by BuzzFeed,

and I think
everything what they are writing

in all of their seven articles -
absolute nonsense.

So, every article,
if you take every article,

and analyse it
from the beginning to the end,

every article is simply false.

It's an invention. It's a legend.

It's a journalistic legend,
nothing else.

Some of the cases are simply stupid.

For example, Gareth Williams.

It's a strange case, but definitely

Russia was not involved
in Gareth Williams' strange death.

Why he died, what happened -
it's entirely unknown.

You can make
a long, long theory of it,

but he was definitely not
assassinated by the Russians.

There was never any reason
to get rid of him.

Nothing.
There's not any fact proving that.

And this goes exactly
with every other case.

HEIDI BLAKE: One of the more
bizarre deaths on the list of 14

is the spy in the bag.

It's an extraordinary mystery

and has perplexed
the public here for years.

British people - it's Agatha
Christie - love the whodunit.

Like, it's Colonel Plum,
in the lounge, with a candlestick.

HEIDI BLAKE: Gareth Williams
worked as a codebreaker at MI6.

He apparently was investigating
Russian money-laundering networks

in the months before his death.

And he was found dead in
very suspicious circumstances.

Gareth's body had been placed
inside a sports bag,

which itself had been placed
inside the bathtub of his apartment.

It had been padlocked
from the outside

and the key to the padlock was
underneath his body, inside the bag.

PETER FAULDING: I was contacted
to attend the crime scene itself.

I'm quite small and flexible. I was
a similar size to Gareth Williams.

When I first saw the crime scene,
I think it was quite overwhelming.

I expected to see a very untidy area
and lots of struggle,

but there was no signs of struggle
anywhere within the flat.

Everything had been
forensically examined.

There was not a mark
of Gareth's fingerprints

on the padlock,
the bath, the shower screen.

HEIDI BLAKE:
It's impossible to live in a flat

and not to leave
your fingerprints and your DNA

and forensic traces all over it.

Another suspicious factor is

the heating in the flat had been
turned up near enough to maximum,

even though it was mid-August,

which meant that
his body was so badly decomposed

by the time it was found

that it was impossible to run
any particular toxicology tests

to determine
whether he'd been poisoned

or really to determine
his actual cause of death.

MI6 hadn't raised the alarm,

despite the fact that
Gareth had been missing from work.

RICHARD HOLMES:
It was about a week

before someone actually
decided to visit his flat.

Theoretically,
this is possible to do.

I think it is more probable

that Gareth was on his own
at the time of his death.

I was asked to recreate
various scenarios.

I spent hundreds of attempts
to actually get in the bag.

You can't achieve
getting into the bag or the bath

without leaving a trace
of fingerprints and DNA.

HEIDI BLAKE: The idea that
he had climbed into a sports bag,

zipped the sports bag up,

padlocked it from the outside,

locked the key
underneath his own body

and then perished
really beggars belief.

I have to say, I thought the
investigation did their level best

to really get to the bottom of this.

I don't know
if people do connect this case

to Russians
or international espionage.

I mean, that is...
one or two individuals might do,

BuzzFeed might do,
investigative journalists might do.

I'm not decrying any of their
investigative work and what they...

the conclusions they draw.

But I don't know
if that's a broader opinion.

From my perspective,
a police investigation perspective,

and what we looked at,

there was no evidence to suggest

that the Russians
are involved in Gareth's death.

Until we have further evidence
and more information coming in,

it could be either of those.

I was a police officer in London
for nearly 40 years,

and I served
as a detective in all ranks

up until
Detective Chief Superintendent,

and my last years were with
the Major Crime Homicide Command.

In the case of Gareth Williams,

the property was secured by us
for over a week

whilst forensic examination
was conducted

and fingerprinting
and infrared light

and a whole load of other tests.

The absence of fingerprints
is remarked on as being suspicious.

Well, in one way, yes,
it could be that if someone has...

if there's evidence of
it being cleaned up or cleared up,

but there wasn't
any real evidence of that.

I'm more inclined to believe
it was a death by misadventure

and that he was on his own
when the event occurred,

and he placed himself in the bag

and he died whilst in the bag.

I know the expert reported
that he couldn't do it

and the videos were shown
at the coroner's inquest

of him attempting it,
and it wasn't possible.

But subsequently, another expert
demonstrated it could be done.

By going in and inserting
the toggles in a particular way,

you could do it.

I understand that
BuzzFeed introduces Gareth's death

as yet another example,

drawing a correlation and link

over a series of deaths that
occurred in the United Kingdom,

but I have no evidence of that.

I wouldn't make any claim
to such a suggestion at all.

He was an employee of
the government intelligence service,

who engaged in many activities,

but to then place his death

at the door of a foreign state's

extrajudicial killing

is a big leap.

I don't think there's anything wrong

with the investigation
that was done.

What is unsavoury
and unsatisfactory is,

despite that extensive inquiry,

not every death can be explained

satisfactorily or easily

because
there's a gap in our knowledge

of what actually took place.

And within that gap

allows people to speculate
quite widely on what happened.

DIRECTOR: So what do you make
of BuzzFeed's theory

that 14 people, including Scot,

might have been murdered
on British soil by Russians?

A theory is not factual evidence.

Yes, there's a couple of Russians

that have been found dead
on British soil.

But BuzzFeed cannot prove that this
was Russians that murdered Scot.

And I believe,
if any other inquiry was opened up,

it would open up the whole case.

So, as a family,

we can't rest in peace
because we don't know the truth.

We've been left in limbo.

My daughters didn't want me
to do this interview with you,

and I'm actually honoured,

and I believe you will do
your very best to tell the truth.

(HEART MONITOR FLATLINES)

I don't know
why Michelle feels that.

I know that she has adopted
different viewpoints

at different times
about what might have happened,

but I just know that what we have in
the documents is highly compelling,

and he's at the centre of a web of
individuals who were all connected.

That's really
the thrust of our story.

You know, over the years,
the amount of people

who've been in touch with me has
been completely amazing. You know?

I've had private investigator firms,

letters from lawyers - yeah? -

and people chasing assets, yeah?

Not one person, not one person

has actually found
anything of any significance.

Supposedly, Berezovsky was murdered,

Scot was murdered...

I don't think
that was the case at all.

I think it's just been a set
of circumstances which just fits.

The door was locked and
there was no signs of forced entry

and it was locked from the inside.

Do I believe that
he was thrown out a window?

I don't think so. I mean, no.

Do I believe that
he intended to commit suicide?

Maybe yes, maybe no.
Maybe he just slipped on the ledge.

I don't know is the answer.

So you had no sense
that anyone in the Kremlin

or Vladimir Putin was enraged

because of Scot's relationship
with Boris Berezovsky?

(SUPPRESSED LAUGH)

I have absolutely
no idea whatsoever.

You've got sensationalist articles
being written about this

for years and years and years.

It keeps on getting dragged up
again and again and again.

But do I believe that he was,
let's put it bluntly,

bumped off by, you know,
Russian mobsters?

No, with a with a capital N. No.

How do you respond to any critic
who says

you guys are grasping at straws,

you're stringing things together
- that aren't connected?
- Yeah, yeah.

So... And I think, look...

I think
that's a reasonable question.

People might look and say,
"This story is insane,

you've just done like...
you're just joining the dots,

like, it doesn't make any sense."

This is so serious
the US intelligence community

was drawing up
a report about these people

and assessing the likelihood

of Kremlin involvement
in their deaths.

Do you believe that
the Russian state has sanctioned

or been able to assassinate people
on British soil?

Well, there is no need to believe,
if you know for sure.

REPORTER:
These are the London offices

of ex-MI6 officer
Christopher Steele,

who compiled
the Donald Trump dossier,

which contains
unverified allegations

that Russian security officials

have compromising material
on the President Elect.

The dossier that
Christopher Steele produced

became sort of political fodder
in the United States.

When you read the Steele report,

it by no means was what we would
call "finished intelligence".

It was a variety of sources
with a variety of levels of access

and a variety of levels of trust
by Mr Steele.

REPORTER: Federal prosecutors
have laid out a clear picture

of flimsy and potentially biased
sourcing in the dossier.

Steele has defended his work,

claiming it was raw intelligence
that needed further vetting,

but that his sources were solid.

To a professional, to someone

who's worked
on Russian intelligence issues,

the information in the dossier,
in the reports,

it was certainly consistent
with the kind of activities

that Russian intelligence
gets involved in.

You know, if you wanted
a crude answer from me

about those 14 deaths,
my guess would be probably

two-thirds of them
were linked to Russia

and half of those were linked
to the Russian Government.

One of the problems that we all have
in assessing these suspicious deaths

is that you're dealing
with an environment

which is totally unlike
our own society.

The Kremlin doesn't have as

all-encompassing control over these
things as people might imagine.

In Russia,
you have an overlapping morass

between the Kremlin,
the intelligence services,

business oligarchs
and organised crime.

And so,
when you look at any one of these,

it's really quite difficult
to assess the true motivation

that might have been behind
one of these suspicious deaths.

Clearly, there are cases
which are very clear-cut,

like Litvinenko,
where you're looking at something

very unusual, a very unusual
methodology and so on.

In a case like Berezovsky,
there are any number of explanations

as to what it might be.

There's not
an obvious state motivation.

You know,
you're at this kind of interface

between oligarchs, the Kremlin
and the intelligence services,

all in a kind of overlapping
indistinct structure.

When we first published,

it was honestly gutting
that it barely made a ripple.

And it was only
when Skripal happened...

..everything changed overnight.

REPORTER: Tonight,
Sergei and Yulia Skripal

are in a critical condition
in hospital here in Salisbury.

HEIDI BLAKE: In the case
of Sergei and Yulia Skripal,

the former Russian spy
and his daughter,

who were poisoned
on the streets of Salisbury,

the Russian state has targeted
a defector and his daughter,

and they've used
the Soviet nerve agent Novichok

to target those two people,
thereby indiscriminately exposing

hundreds of members
of the British public

to an internationally outlawed
weapon of war,

a weapon of mass destruction.

TOM WARREN:
And then not only that,

the poison was picked up
by two poor unsuspecting people

who went bin-diving for stuff,

and one of them died.

And then,
only when that happened,

that entire insane, like,
sequence of tragic events,

did people look at our stories
and go, "Oh, my God, they're right."

And it was so bizarre.
Nobody listened...

..Skripal happened, and
we saw the results of our reporting

just being copied out everywhere
by other news services.

REPORTER: Journalist Heidi Blake
believes the Russian state

could potentially be behind
many more deaths in the UK.

SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE:
Yvette Cooper.

The Foreign Secretary rightly said

that no attempt
on innocent life on our soil

should go
uninvestigated or unpunished.

But what about the 14 cases
where UK authorities,

in many of these cases, have
concluded that these were suicides,

despite the fact
that there has now been

considerable reported evidence,
including in the BuzzFeed report,

of further evidence
that casts serious doubt

on those conclusions?

There are serious questions about
whether the police investigations

were thorough enough.
MPs: Hear, hear.

I must say that the Right
Honourable Lady is perfectly right.

There are a number
of deeply troubling cases,

Mr Perepilichny, for instance,

and, to the best of our knowledge,
there is no further evidence

that points
in the direction of criminality.

But I think
what she says is very important,

and we will certainly follow it up
and I will certainly have

that discussion
with the Home Secretary.

TOM WARREN: It was looked at because

the police were ordered
to do a review

into a lot of the deaths
we reported on.

They were just like,
"Yeah, there's nothing going on."

But it was fascinating
because, after that,

it then came up
in the Russia report.

You know, there was
a big report into Russia,

and there was a section within it

on suspicious deaths
that were linked to Russia.

SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE:
Mr Dominic Grieve.

When the Intelligence
and Security Committee of Parliament

was reformed,
we announced immediately

that one of our priorities
was to carry out

an inquiry into
Russia's covert activities

and whether we had
the appropriate responses to it.

The Intelligence and Security
Committee of Parliament

decided to carry out
an inquiry into Russia.

We wanted to look across the full
spectrum of Russia's activities.

Rather than publishing an inquiry
with very substantial redactions,

we decided to publish a report

which had
as few redactions as possible.

But I'm afraid you'll find,
if you read the report,

that significant parts of it
are redacted,

and in the circumstances
I can't comment further on that.

Clearly, there was
some material in the report

that might have been of
embarrassment to a government

in the run-up
to a general election.

We then got the explanation,

"Well, unfortunately,
there was a lot to look at.

There was no possibility
of it being published

before the general election
was called."

Well, those explanations were,

I described them at the time
as "bogus",

and that's what they were.

They were simply not credible.

Now, that suggests
a degree of control freakery

by the Johnson Government.

And that may simply be
the best explanation on offer

as to why
it behaved in this strange fashion.

So I want to ask the Prime Minister
about the extremely serious report

by the Intelligence
and Security Committee.

It concludes that Russia poses

an immediate and urgent threat
to our national security.

The Prime Minister
received that report ten months ago.

Given that the threat is
described as immediate and urgent,

why on earth did the Prime Minister
sit on that report for so long?

Hear, hear!
Well, Mr Speaker, actually,

when I was Foreign Secretary

and for the period
that I've been in office,

we've been taking
the strongest possible action

against Russian wrongdoing.

Were these cases reopened
as a result of this report?

DOMINIC GRIEVE:
Not as far as I'm aware.

But if you just wait a moment,

I'll just go and get
my copy of the report.

You may have read it,
but - as it's just to hand -

let's just have a look.

Yeah, here we are.

It's perfectly clearly laid out.

It says that we made inquiry,

we received a reply
by the intelligence agencies,

but it's not one
which I can share with you.

What that reply is
is redacted out.

And that's as far as I can go
to answering your question.

So, essentially, that's as far
as the British Government will go

to answering that question.

Yes, it's the...

The view that was taken
was that it had to...

The answer that was given
needed to be redacted

because of
national security implications

and it had
to be based on that criteria -

made that quite clear.

Part of the reason
that the UK did not want

to turn this into
an international scandal is because

they didn't want
to poke the bear, Russia.

TOM WARREN:
You've got trillions in deals

coming into the country
from Russia.

Money can buy you impunity,

which, frankly,
I find quite terrifying.

BILL BROWDER: London is
levitating on a sea of dirty money.

I brought this to the attention
of all sorts of regulators,

government officials,

parliamentary committees,

and there have been no consequences.

Why has there been no consequences?

Because there's
so many people benefiting from it.

HEIDI BLAKE:
There was a point at which

Putin could have been stopped.

But for the last couple of decades,

Western leaders were getting further
and further into bed with Putin,

rather than distancing ourselves
from Vladimir Putin's Government.

(SHOUTING)

Stop the steal!

The Western world is going through

a period of a crisis of confidence
and legitimacy,

for all kinds of different reasons,

and this provides the Russians
with an opportunity.

What they do is precisely
to take advantage of those flaws,

those cracks in the system,
that are already there,

and insert a crowbar
and see how much

they can lever it open all the more.

HEIDI BLAKE: Russia's posture

has become more and more menacing,
more and more aggressive,

in plain sight
of the British authorities.

YULI DUBOV: Putin had to be stopped
after Litvinenko's death,

and he had to be stopped
when he seized Crimea.

And what happened? Nothing.

REPORTER:
Russia has invaded Ukraine.

He felt that
he can do whatever he wants.

It is already Europe's worst refugee
crisis since the Second World War.

(SCREAMS)

HEIDI BLAKE:
Putin wants his enemies to know

that if you anger him,

if you betray the Motherland...

..there is no safe place for you.

Wherever you are,
his assassins will hunt you down.

There is no room
for the British Government

to ignore what has happened
on British soil.

And what we see now
is the consequences

of that failure to take a firm line.

YULI DUBOV: The West has an enemy,
a very serious enemy,

a very aggressive enemy...

..and an enemy
which is not restricted

or contained by anything.

If you don't understand
that it's time NOW to fight back,

then when you start
to understand this...

..it may be too late.

AccessibleCustomerService@sky.uk