All language subtitles for Once.Upon.a.Time.in.Londongrad.S01E04.WEBRip.x264-ION10

We've seen in
our reporting cases in which

politically exposed Russians
die suspiciously in Britain.

REPORTER: The wealthy Russian exile
and whistle-blower dropped dead.

British police ruled
out foul play.

Isn't it reasonable to ask: Did the
police look at it properly?

Police say Young's death is not
being treated as suspicious.

There are so
many questions left unanswered.

REPORTER 2: Police officers
say they have no evidence
that anyone else was involved.

TOM WARREN:
If these events are happening,

here's a government that has
impunity when it comes

to attacking or undermining
dissidents abroad.

That is insane,

like that's truly, like,
mind-bogglingly insane.

A murder investigation

into the death of another
Russian on British soil.

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."

London is levitating
on a sea of dirty money.

If you deal with somebody

who has
a very suspicious track record,

someday it will come back
to haunt you.

You received a call the night before
Berezovsky was found dead,

and someone on the call said

Berezovsky was being
"dealt with."

I can't remember
his surname now, actually,

but he said
that Boris Berezovsky

would be found in a body bag.

And, actually, Boris Berezovsky
was found in a body bag,

I think,
within a day or two after that.

Why would they call you?

Why? Because I'm the greatest
canary singing in the cage.

They know that it's gonna
probably go to the media,

which it did.

If you've got a master plan

and you know someone's using
the media, quite rightly so,

in the public's interest
to tell the truth,

you're going to make
phone calls like that.

That's why we're having
this conversation

so that this conversation
will come out.

5D chess.

(BIRDS CHIRPING)

YULI DUBOV: In the middle
of the day, I got a phone call

from Boris's assistant, who
was with Boris most of the time.

And he told me that Boris died.

I got to Ascot,

the police came there
maybe 10 minutes before us.

I wasn't admitted to the house.

So we spent
all the night outdoors.

It was... end of an era.

A very significant

and very important part
of my life

died with him.

Boris Berezovsky was found dead

at his former wife's home.

He was found hanged
from the shower rail

in the bathroom
of the family home.

He had one single bodyguard,

and that man had gone out
to do some errands.

And during that window
when Berezovsky was unprotected,

he was hanged
from the shower rail.

When his bodyguard found him,

he appeared
to have been suspended

from the rail by a scarf.

The scarf had torn in two
and Berezovsky's body

was slumped
on the bathroom floor.

The police attended the scene
and later concluded

that this was a suicide.

Berezovsky had a broken rib,

a blunt force injury
on his head.

There was an unidentified
fingerprint on the shower rail.

Scotland Yard was very well aware

that Berezovsky was under threat.

The authorities in Britain
knew that he was a target.

One. One, two, three, four.

You have the voice alright?

With Berezovsky case,
there are two statements:

one statement
by the British police,

they're saying
that he hung himself;

another statement
comes from the leading

international expert
on such cases,

whose name
is Professor Brinkmann

from Hamburg, Germany.

On the request
of Berezovsky family,

Professor Brinkmann
made an investigation himself,

a medical investigation.

His conclusion
was it was murder.

When somebody is hanged,

the ligature tends to form
a V-shaped mark.

But the strangulation marks
on his neck

were inconsistent with hanging.

They were more consistent
with manual strangulation.

The Berezovsky
family pathologist said

this is clearly an assassination
and not a suicide.

This conclusion was given
to the coroner,

coroner said this is
a leading international expert.

His reasons
are obvious and clear,

and therefore
I cannot make a verdict.

It is impossible to say
whether he committed suicide

or whether he was murdered.

This story,
unless you knew about it,

you'd think it's total lies,
wouldn't you?

All of a sudden he disappeared,
just disappeared.

He didn't tell me
he disappeared.

I rung his accountants
and said, "Where's Scot?"

He said "He's gone, he's skint,
and he's left the country."

DIRECTOR: Did he tell you
how he lost all his money?

Yeah, he said it was
something to do with Russia.

Project Ru...
Project Moscow or something.

Apparently, it was
a massive, massive deal,

it was to do with Boris, and it just
went wrong overnight.

He left the country
and disappeared.

He rung me and he said
he's lost all his money,

and then he, um...
said he's coming back.

And I met him in the hotel
in Marble Arch.

He was very nervous.

Just a different person.

He would smoke
100 cigarettes a day.

It was unbelievable.

There was this moment where the
sky seemed to fall in for Scot

and he went from having hundreds of
millions of pounds at his disposal

to suddenly being destitute.

JIMMY:
He couldn't even buy a drink.

He used to meet me in this pub in
Ealing, my friends were there.

All my friends knew him.

No one could believe
the way he looked.

He was actually... you know,
it was bad, very, very bad.

STEPHEN KAY: He looked dreadful,
absolutely dreadful.

There was, normally, we always had a
little joke about something.

He was in a bad state.

He certainly was
nowhere near his old self.

(BIRDS CHIRPING AND CAWING)

It was the 10th of December, I'd
just put up my Christmas tree,

and I had a phone call
from the media

to say that,
"Have you heard the news?"

And I said, "What news?"
They said, "Scot...

Scot Young's been found dead."

So I said,
"Please don't call me,

telling me things like that,
you know?"

So they said, "We'll call you
back within a couple of hours
once we've had it confirmed."

And they called me back to say that
Scot had been found dead.

And my daughters
were out at the time,

and so I wanted to tell them
when they came home.

But the media, there was lots
of media outside the apartment,

so they got to hear before
I had a chance to tell them.

So I just found it appalling
that, you know,

he'd been found dead
on the 8th of December

and we didn't hear about this
till the 10th, two days later.

By the media.

SCARLET YOUNG:
Just let him know the truth,

that there are other options.

When his daughters first heard
that their father had died,

they just didn't believe that.

They didn't accept
that he had died.

They knew that he had checked
himself into a psychiatric unit,

so their first move
was to make their way down

to the psychiatric hospital
and to ask to see their dad,

but when they got there they learned
that he had checked himself out.

And so, you know,
they naturally assumed that

what he had always predicted had
come to pass, he had been murdered.

His funeral was
the worst day of my life.

Terrible.

I had to escort
the two beautiful young girls.

They'd just lost their dad
who they loved dearly.

It's just too sad.

(BIRDS CAWING)

At Scot's funeral, Sasha
and Scarlet were approached

by somebody they didn't know,
who told them

to stop asking questions
about how their dad had died
and just let sleeping dogs lie.

That was somebody
who had some interest

in making sure
that the matter was laid at rest

and that no one
went digging around

behind the circumstances
of Scot's death.

This person didn't want anyone
causing any further trouble.

After Scot's death,

Scot's daughters
were completely unwilling

to accept that their father
had killed himself.

They gained admission
to the flat to investigate,

and they uncovered something which
the police had completely missed.

When they leaned out of the window
and they took a look down,

they noticed on the window ledge
rows of scratches,

almost as if the fingernails
of two hands

had been fighting
to stay inside the window.

In the UK, any time anybody dies

of really anything
other than natural causes,

we hold an inquest
into that person's death.

Of all of my memories
of working on this story,

the thing that has
always stuck with me

is going to Scot's inquest.

Around me are Scot's daughters,

the two of them there together,
looking after each other.

There was testimony from them
saying, "We spoke to him,

he was talking about the future,
he didn't sound depressed."

Scot, he's being watched
by the FSB.

He was Boris Berezovsky's
facilitator.

If somebody like that dies
in any circumstance,

you'd imagine there'd be some
alarm bell rung that said, "Hey,

we should probably
have a look at this."

They said to the policeman,
"What did you do?"

"Ah, no, it just looked
like a suicide."

Window, person, suicide.

The police at the very least ought
to have dusted for fingerprints

before they concluded
that this was a suicide.

Clearly, in the absence
of any evidence

gathered by the police
of foul play,

the coroner couldn't make
an unlawful killing verdict.

There wasn't
the evidence available.

The inquest returned
an open verdict.

But when it reaches
that point of, like,

you know,
kind of traditional enquiry,

the coroner was like,
well, its complex.

She didn't sit there
and say this is suicide, yes,

or no, this is something else.

She was like,
there's ambiguity here.

This is not simple, you know.

Even in a coroner's court,

where you think things
would just be resolved,

there was no clear
and apparent resolution.

There are so
many questions left unanswered.

We are still left
with the question of why

and what really happened.

We went out
to recreate an investigation,

and we were like,
"What would you look at?

The motives, the circumstances, the
reasons around why this happened?"

We were looking into the death of
Scot Young and Boris Berezovsky.

We knew they were friends
and dining companions.

They were part
of a group of friends

who all dined together
regularly.

There was a man
called Paul Castle

and a man called Robbie Curtis,

who had been part of that group,

all of whom had had died in
fairly suspicious circumstances.

Two of whom had fallen
under London tube trains

and one of whom had rolled
off the top of a tall building,

all within a few years
of each other.

And then as we looked more
into Boris Berezovsky,

we found more and more evidence

that people who had been
closely connected with him

had also died
in similarly grisly ways.

From Alexander Litvinenko
to Badri Patarkatsishvili.

You know,
we began to pull one thread,

then discovered here's one, then
here's another connected to that.

There were the two lawyers linked to
Scot Young and Berezovsky.

Stephen Curtis died
after his helicopter crashed.

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."

Stephen Moss, Curtis's partner in
many of the deals that he was doing

on behalf of Boris and Badri,

had died 6 months before
of a sudden heart attack.

(LONG BEEP)

We kept on turning new stones

and discovering that
here's another individual

who is connected to the
circumstances that we're looking at,

or this other person
who we know died suspiciously.

Gareth Williams
was apparently investigating

Russian money laundering networks.

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

which itself had been placed
inside the bathtub.

POLICE OFFICER:
Gareth got himself into that bag

and once in that bag, he died.

Oh! This is completely insane.

Yuri Golubev, the co-founder
of an oil giant in Russia,

also died
of a sudden heart attack.

A Russian diplomat, Igor Ponomarev,

collapsed after the opera
in London.

(SINGING HIGH NOTES)

It just kind
of grew bigger and bigger.

It was a chilling story to work
on, really, from the beginning,

but it got more so
with every new discovery.

REPORTER: Wealthy Russian
exile and whistle-blower

Alexander Perepilichnyy
dropped dead while jogging...

in the latest
Kremlin crime scene.

British police ruled out
foul play.

Possibly the most
outlandish case we investigated

was the case of a scientist...

Who was part of the team

which discovered the poison in
Alexander Litvinenko's system.

He died of a suicide
despite being...

Stabbed to death repeatedly
with two separate knives.

This is crazy.
Like, this is crazy.

We began
to map out the connections

between these individuals
and the Kremlin

and the FSB
and Russian organized crime.

And, ultimately, we were able
to put 14 names on our list.

We had spent two years investigating
all of these deaths

and we had scattergun evidence

in that we were
kind of gathering it

from all these different sources

with different levels
of reliability.

But the common theme
that we had found

was Russia.

We'd mapped out the connections
between these 14 individuals.

We'd found all of their
connections to Russia.

Some of them
had angered the Kremlin.

Some of them had been living
in fear of their lives.

This was a story that
absolutely had to be told.

We wanted to publish the story,
but we needed more proof.

You know,
we needed to try and get

some kind of official
perspective on all of this,

but we couldn't get anyone
in authority in Britain

or within the police
to talk to us about this.

They were
a really, really closed book,

and we needed some sense of,

what do the intelligence
community believe?

And that was where
Jason Leopold came in.

Jason Leopold is
a legendary reporter in the US.

He has developed a reputation
as a FOIA terrorist.

JASON LEOPOLD: They said that
we'll give you some documents

as long as you promise to never
file a FOIA request again.

And I had never really went
through any kind of program

to train to become
an investigative journalist,

it was just a curiosity I had.

I'm obsessed with documents,

spies and uncovering secrets.

He has an incredible track record of
forcing the US government

to disclose all kinds
of compromising records.

JASON: Whether it's
someone at CIA, FBI,

the Department of Defence,
the NSA,

I don't necessarily just believe

every single thing
that they're saying.

I have to go further to verify
and confirm those details.

When Heidi told me about

what her team was investigating,

I knew I could help out.

I so aggressively pursue documents,

I want to have the evidence.

I'm dealing with information
that government agencies claim

will threaten national security
if I reveal it.

So at that point,
what I could offer was

whether or not the US
was keeping tabs on this.

If this really is part
of an assassination program,

the US intelligence agencies
would know about it.

Essentially, what you're trying
to do is find people,

find people who would
be willing to speak.

Find people who may be inclined

to disclose
classified information.

Whenever I contacted
intelligence officials,

any meeting we had or any time we
tried to set up a meeting,

I was constantly traveling back
and forth to Washington DC.

Having meetings late at night,
in parks.

Trying to find out
who knew what and when.

But I do remember the...

the, you know,
the "Holy shit, we got it."

JANE BRADLEY: It was just
a normal day at the office,

Heidi was having a meeting,

and then suddenly

Jason Leopold sent us
this message...

and my jaw just kind
of hit the floor.

And I just remember Tom

sort of waving frantically at
Heidi when she was on the phone.

And I kind of shouted out
across the newsroom to Heidi,

"Have you seen Jason's message?"

JASON: I became aware that

the Office of the Director
of National Intelligence,

which oversees
the intelligence community,

had prepared a report about the use
of political assassinations

as a form of statecraft
by the Russian Federation.

What we found
was a list of people

whose deaths were considered
to be assassinations.

RICHARD HOLMES:
We now had confirmation

that every single name
on our list

was a suspected Russian hit.

Every name is on that list!

All 14 of those individuals
were listed in the US report

on suspected assassinations
in the UK.

The US authorities had warned
Britain's foreign intelligence
service to take action

to try to stop Russia conducting

such bold and aggressive manoeuvres
in the United Kingdom.

I recall finding out that
there was a name on this list,

a person: Perepilichnyy.

JANE BRADLEY: This Russian
financier, who blew the whistle

on this huge fraud that was
linked to Kremlin officials.

And then one day,

Perepilichnyy is going
for a jog.

(BREATHING HEAVILY)

(COUGHING)

Look, 44-year-old guys

do occasionally drop dead
while jogging,

but we have so many dead people,

anybody who comes too close gets...

Lots of people get killed,
but...

We... You know, we didn't...

I mean, ultimately,
he asked me to do something

that I did that got him killed.

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