All language subtitles for Once.Upon.a.Time.in.Londongrad.S01E05.WEBRip.x264-ION10

MALE INTERVIEWER:
Who was Alexander Perepilichnyy?

Yeah, so Perepilichnyy is...

OK, so Perepilichnyy is a story
that has basically, like,

consumed a large part of our lives
for the last few years.

(OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYING)

The US intelligence community

was drawing up a report
about Russian assassinations

and assessing the likelihood of
Kremlin involvement in their deaths.

The Perepilichnyy case
had a high rating

for having been ordered
by the Kremlin.

(OMINOUS MUSIC INTENSIFIES)

With Perepilichnyy's case,

we were worried there would
be a miscarriage of justice

if this information wasn't known.

TOM: It just flipped a switch.

It's not us, this group
of journalists looking at it,

it's the US intelligence community.

And that was a moment where I
just thought, like, shit, like...

We actually really
are on to something.

(OMINOUS MUSIC INTENSIFIES)

(RADIO STATIC)

REPORTER: A murder investigation
is being launched into the death

of another Russian on British soil.

(LOUD CLOCK GONGS)

(THEME MUSIC STARTS)

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."

(RUSSIAN SINGER RAPPING)

REPORTER: London is levitating
on a sea of dirty money.

RUSSIAN MAN:
If you deal with somebody

who has a very suspicious
track record,

some day it will come back
to haunt you.

(POLICE SIREN WAILING)

(BIRDS CHIRPING)

The rate of deaths in Surrey,
suspicious or otherwise, isn't high.

It's not a huge population.
It's not a huge landmass.

(POLICE SIREN WAILING)

There's obviously clear murders.

People who may be found
by the side of the road

who could well have been
hit by a car.

There's people who, on first sight,
appear to have taken their own life,

and then there's an untimely death
where there's no obvious cause.

(CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKING)

The news of Mr Perepilichnyy's
death came into Special Branch,

because of the fact that he was a
Russian who had moved into the area.

The fact of the matter remains that
what detectives needed to deal with

was how he came to be found dead.

(OMINOUS MUSIC INTENSIFIES)

(OFFICE CHATTER)

With the Perepilichnyy case,
that one was the one

we were racing against time
to get out.

And that was because the inquest
was about to start.

The initial interest in the death
of Alexander Perepilichnyy really
blew up.

People asking questions about
whether Perepilichnyy had been
poisoned.

I wanted to investigate what
Perepilichnyy had been doing

just before his death.

So, that's when I turned to the
chief antagonist of Vladimir Putin.

If you were to ask my friends
to describe Bill Browder - me -

in one sentence,

the answer would be that
I'm Putin's number one enemy.

I was running the largest
investment fund in Russia.

I was expelled from Russia and
declared a threat to national
security.

They deported me from Russia
to the UK.

When the Russians turn on you,
they don't tend to do so mildly.

They tend to do so
with extreme prejudice.

Putin I believe to be the
richest man in the world.

And the purpose of Putin's regime
has been to commit terrible crimes

in order to get that money.

Putin needs to keep everybody
absolutely terrified of him.

He doesn't have to kill everybody.
He just has to kill a few people

and make it so clear that terrible
things will come to you if you cross Putin.

In the summer of 2010,

I was putting together
YouTube videos

about corrupt police officers.

We focused on exposing crimes
committed by the police officers

and the tax officers,
and how much money they got.

Everybody thought we were the
greatest thing since sliced bread,

"Wow, you're going after
the bad guys."

One day, my colleague
Jamison Firestone

got an unsolicited email
from Alexander Perepilichnyy...

..who claimed he had information -
bank statements of a tax official

who was in the business of
authorizing illegal tax refunds.

The tax official authorized the
largest illegal tax refund in the
history of Russia.

The information was as good
as anything we'd ever gotten

and as consequential
as anything we'd ever gotten.

A true smoking gun.

But the Russians, they're playing
3D chess over there.

We didn't know
whether this was a setup,

whether this guy was for real.

We didn't know if this was
a way of them trying to hurt us.

(TENSE MUSIC PLAYING)

Bill said, "What do you wanna do?"

I said, "I wanna meet him."
He said, "Could be dangerous."

I said, "We need to meet him.
I really want to."

We've been threatened
a million times already.

Hopefully, this won't end
in violence of some kind.

When Jamie went to that meeting,

we had a whole bunch
of plain-clothed bodyguards

scattered around the place.

We have very, very serious
concerns for our safety.

This is after Litvinenko
was poisoned.

(CHUCKLING) I'm not drinking
any water or eating anything.

They're like, if you scratch
your head, if you do like this,

all hell breaks loose and my team
will get you the hell outta there.

(TENSE, MYSTERIOUS MUSIC)

This guy walks in, he introduces
himself as Alexander.

Alexander Perepilichnyy
was a money manager.

He was a money launderer.
He was a financier in Russia.

He was part of the fraud
that he ended up exposing.

BILL: He had fallen out with the
people he had managed the money for,

and they threatened him with
various criminal cases in Russia

if he didn't return the money.

And so he fled to the UK.
He got in touch with us.

His logic was
that if he exposed his enemies,
that would get him off the hook.

And so he gave us the information
on the illegal tax refund.

And I said, "You've given me
this stuff. What do you want?"

He said,
"I want you to make a movie
and expose the tax inspectors."

The refund was made
to three companies

that police officers
working with organized criminals

stole from my client,
the Hermitage Fund.

BILL: This video, it went viral
in Russia and outside of Russia.

Alexander Perepilichnyy
blew the whistle

on a massive Russian
government-linked fraud.

And he handed over evidence
of Kremlin complicity

in a huge money laundering scandal.

We knew the Russians
were threatening him

with all sorts of
criminal investigations

and asking for, like, a million
dollars or something to close it,

but we were shocked when he died.

(HEAVY BREATHING)

Perepilichnyy had threats
levelled against him.

He was afraid for his life.

His name was found
on a Russian hit list.

(HEARTBEATS)

(BREATHING QUICKENS)

(SIRENS WAILING)

NEWS READER 1: Russian businessman
Alex Perepilichnyy was found dead.

NEWS READER 2:
Sources have told the BBC

he'd had a medical check-up
months before,

no problems had been found.

NEW READER 3: He was just 44.

JANE: The police, when
they found his body that day,

almost immediately decided
it was a non-suspicious death.

REPORTER 1:
Police couldn't have been more
clear. There was no foul play.

He died of natural causes.

BILL: When they arrived, police did
not treat his death as suspicious.

I believe it was a full,
open, diligent investigation

and everyone on that investigation
would have been determined

to the best of their ability
to come up with answers.

HEIDI: We have Gold Committee minutes
which show senior officers

telling the investigating officers at
the time to make this a non-issue,

telling them that there is ambient
interest in this case at a government level,

telling them to keep their statements
to the media bland.

There was pressure on the
officers involved in that case

not to inflame speculation
about Perepilichnyy's death.

The fact of the matter was
that at that moment in time,

there wasn't anything to suggest
that the death was suspicious.

So it was, kind of,
managing expectations

around some sort of
media frenzy happening.

The police lost key evidence

that limited the scope of the
investigation and what could
be done.

Police evidence disks containing
critical digital information

from Perepilichnyy's computer
went missing.

Not only the original
evidence disk went missing,

but the backup copy
also went missing.

They quickly said we don't
see anything suspicious here.

There was nothing wrong.

HEIDI:
There was all sorts of evidence

that Perepilichnyy was a man
with a target on his back.

The man went and took eight million
pounds worth of life insurance out.

You don't do that.

You don't do that if you don't
think somebody might whack you.

His insurance company didn't
want to pay out the policy.

They requested clinical
investigation

into the contents of his stomach.

The police sent this to a
special forensics laboratory

at a place called Kew Gardens.

(CLASSICAL STRING MUSIC PLAYING)

NEWS REPORTER 4:
Plant toxicology experts from
the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew

were asked to help determine
the cause of death.

WOMAN: Kew Gardens started
as a garden in the mid 1750s.

It became a real centre
for what we term plant taxonomy,

which is basically the study
of plant names,

how to name them,
studying their distribution.

We've actually got more scientists
here than horticultural staff,

so it's really a research institute
with a garden attached.

We were contacted and
asked if we could help.

We had no preconceived ideas.

All we were really looking for -

could he have been given
something that was a toxin?

When the specimens come in,
we accession the samples.

We could see something
that might have had the ion

of an alkaloid from Gelsemium.

Gelsemium is a herb that
occurs mainly in parts of Asia.

HEIDI: Monique Simmonds examined
the contents of his stomach

and gathered that his stomach might
have contained traces of Gelsemium

which is a deadly plant poison,
known to be used by assassins.

It attacks the respiratory system
and it is quite fast acting.

HEIDI:
Its nickname is 'heartbreak grass,'

because it's known
to trigger cardiac arrest

which is exactly what
Alexander Perepilichnyy died of.

That discovery suddenly drew a huge
amount of attention to the case.

NEWS REPORTER 5:
Traces of an extremely
toxic plant in his stomach

appear to have been found.

NEWS REPORTER 6:
There are many calling foul play
and looking for answers.

JANE: The days leading up
to Perepilichnyy's death

were largely shrouded in mystery
for a long time.

A senior French
law enforcement source

found some transactions
on his credit card

which showed him booking rooms in
two hotels for the same night in
central Paris.

But nobody knew what
he was doing there.

I travelled out there to talk
to sources in the French police
about that case

and was able to obtain a copy
of the French police file into
Perepilichnyy's death.

I discovered in the file that
detectives had identified Elmira
Medynska

as the woman Perepilichnyy
had been visiting in Paris.

(JAZZ DRUMS PLAYING)

And so we had a name,

and we had a date of birth
for Elmira Medynska,

we knew she was a Ukrainian national.

We didn't know where she was.

That's when I turn to Jane Bradley.

She is our resident super sleuth
when it comes to tracking people
down.

I started digging into her, and
I did all my usual searches -

social media, public records,
everything I could think of,

and could find no trace of
a woman called Elmira Medynska.

And then I had a breakthrough.

I found a company called
Elmira Medins in Spain.

And I thought,
"She's using a different name,
she's not using her full name."

That then led me to her
Facebook, her Instagram...

She'd changed her biography
on Instagram

and added a residential address
in Paris to her biography.

So I determined,
without much thought,

that I would go to this address.

(MYSTERIOUS MUSIC PLAYING)

I set off, I let the team
know that I was going in,

and we kind of set up check-ins
every ten minutes.

(MYSTERIOUS MUSIC CONTINUES)

I arrived at this huge, great
big Parisian apartment block

with an enormous great
big hardwood door.

There was a big spiral staircase

that went up about eight stories
and I was trudging up,

steps kind of echoing out
in this big stone atrium

and got to the top,

and there was Elmira Medynska
waiting for me.

She was the tallest woman
I have ever seen in my life.

She must have been six foot five
or six foot six.

I said to her,
"Were you expecting me?"

And she said, "Yes, I was."

And she ushered me
into her apartment.

And inside were three men,
all wearing suits,

and speaking with,
in heavily accented English.

I said I was a journalist and I
was there to ask her about a man

she'd spent a couple of nights with
in Paris about five years before,

a man called
Alexander Perepilichnyy.

And she immediately said,
"Of course I know this man."

They had spent these two nights
together in Paris.

He'd been very agitated

and clearly frightened
during their trip together.

JANE: He seemed really stressed
and kept leaving the dinner table.

BILL: The day before
he came back to London,

he was sick after having sushi.

HEIDI:
And had spent hours throwing up.

(OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYING)

(MUSIC FADES OUT ABRUPTLY)

Perepilichnyy's inquest
at the time was ongoing,

and the police simply hadn't
spoken to Elmira Medynska

about how he'd spent
his last two nights.

Perepilichnyy's inquest was heard
at the Old Bailey in the heart of
London.

And the Old Bailey, for anyone
who hasn't stepped inside,

is exactly how you would imagine

an old Victorian, prestigious,
historic court to be like.

(COURT CHATTER)

I personally sat through
18 months of that inquest.

I want this verdict
to be an informed verdict.

It was, kind of,
a race against time

to get Perepilichnyy's story ready.

We wanted to publish it so
the judge and all the parties

would have time to properly
look into the evidence.

We couldn't sit on information
that was germane to that inquest,

so we just had to publish the story.

(DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING)

We went first with
the Perepilichnyy story.

We'd established through Jason's
incredible intelligence sourcing

that there was a document
that had been sent to Congress.

US Intelligence officials
had gathered intel.

With Perepilichnyy's death there
was a high level of confidence

that he was in fact assassinated
on orders of Vladimir Putin.

HEIDI:
We now had brand new information
about the two days before he died.

Our hope with publishing when we did

was that the judge
would see this information,

see, ah, there is a physical
documentary piece of evidence here

that contains potentially
important information

about Perepilichnyy's death.

NEWS REPORTER 7: BuzzFeed have
published a series of explosive
stories

investigating a number of deaths
with links to Russia.

It was a huge relief to
finally publish the story.

We'd been working on it
for over two years of our lives.

I kind of felt like
I had a big flag on my head

for being the troublesome
BuzzFeed reporter

who was upending the inquest
and causing all sorts of problems.

You know when you walk into a room
and you feel half of the room's eyes

glaring at you, hating you
for disrupting their inquest,

for the meddling press kind of
publishing something that just

blew up the inquest.

And the judge and some of the
parties there for the government

just were giving daggers at me.

People were already confused
why BuzzFeed was in a courtroom.

They thought we just
did cat gifs and lists.

(GAVEL BANGING)

Heidi's interview with
Elmira had a huge impact.

The judge scrabbled around
to go through our reporting

and figure out what new lines
of inquiry were worth pursuing.

He decided there were two lines
and that was to interview Elmira
Medynska

and also to get
the US intelligence report.

HEIDI: Clearly highly
pertinent evidence.

That pretty quickly
blew up the inquest.

And they had to suspend it while
the coroner sought new evidence

off the back of our findings.

NEWS REPORTER 8:
Alex Perepilichnyy's inquest
will resume next month.

The inquest was upended
to try and get answers.

The judge did want to hear this
evidence, and it was important.

NEWS REPORTER 9:
Elmira Medynska was never
interviewed by Surrey Police.

The details of what happened in
Paris only came out much later

when she spoke to BuzzFeed and
then the inquest into his death.

One of the key theories
being investigated

was whether or not he was poisoned.

Here we have this witness who the
police didn't bother to interview,

who is now telling a court that he
spent one of his last nights alive
throwing up.

This evidence wouldn't
have been heard

if we hadn't tracked down Elmira
in Paris and told her story.

It's difficult to make
these cases stick in court.

(OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYING)

At the inquest, Monique Simmonds
said it wasn't possible

to say that the substance
she'd detected was Gelsemium.

We were asked specifically
to confirm whether this ion

was or was not from the Gelsemium.

So when we went back
to check on this,

we could not find an ion
that was similar.

We had no evidence that it contained
the alkaloids from Gelsemium.

She said, along with
the other toxicologist,

there were other tests they
would've liked to carry out

to definitively find out
what it was, but they couldn't

because the pathologist threw away
the majority of his stomach contents

and that really limited
the amount of toxicology tests

that could be carried out.

It's one of the many features
of investigating this pattern
of suspicious deaths

that makes it quite difficult
to get to the truth.

Do you have faith in this inquest
as it is to get to the truth?

There is so much information
that's still not been ventilated,

so many requests that we've made
for further investigation actions

which have not been approved.

I felt very conscious
as we went about our work

of the threats that journalists
around the world,

and particularly in Russia,

face on a daily basis,
as they go after the truth.

WOMAN: A couple of us
were living away from home

in these secure locations
we'd been put in.

Weird things started
happening to a few of us -

cars outside our house,

things being moved around
in one of our apartments.

Then you start to think,

"Has this person been behind me for
a long time? Are they following me?"

This was a really chilling
investigation

to work on a story
where you feel threatened.

The kind of level of understanding
that's given me,

I think, doesn't go away.

(OMINOUS MUSIC)

(MUSIC FADES OUT ABRUPTLY)

(TOURIST CHATTER)

This has been a detailed
and exhaustive process

in which the coroner has examined
all of the available evidence,

and has returned a verdict
of natural causes.

This supports the conclusion
reached by Surrey Police in 2013

following a full investigation,
which included two post mortems

and a very extensive range
of toxicology tests.

The thing that baffled me
about the inquest verdict

was how you can say someone died,

likely died of natural causes,

without finding
any natural cause of death.

Today, Putin will be
celebrating this result.

I mean,
just every step of the way,
this was just keystone cops.

There is huge circumstantial
evidence

that Putin sent his assassins here.

If the police had investigated
properly, there would've been a
different result.

I'm satisfied that the investigation

was conducted to the best
of its ability

based on what was known at the time
and the evidence available.

There weren't any
external factors involved,

and that's the conclusion
that the Coroner came to as well.

That it was probably natural causes.

If people want to say the
Perepilichnyy case was innocent

and it was a heart attack, fine.

Why was some of the evidence
heard behind closed doors?

You don't do that in an
average heart attack case.

If I went out and ate some
bad sushi and keeled over,

there's no way on Earth that in my
inquest there'd be 'closed evidence'

that was withheld for
'national security reasons.'

(DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING)

HEIDI: The British authorities
had to be held to account

for their failure to act on the
evidence that we'd already uncovered

that Russia may have been conducting
an escalating campaign

of targeted assassination
on British soil.

(DRAMATIC MUSIC INTENSIFIES)

(MUSIC STOPS, BIRDS CHIRPING)

Everything what they're writing
is wrong.

It's false information,
it's disinformation.

It's deception.
It's not true what they're writing.

If somebody wants
to give an interview,

like I'm doing right now,

it does not mean
that he automatically

becomes a potential victim for
the Russian intelligence services.

No, this is not true.

And if I am walking out
of this room now

and something happens to me
like an automobile accident

or I'm getting poisoned
with bad fish,

something because I love sushi, OK?

That does not mean that the Russian
intelligence is involved.

But of course, BuzzFeed can make
an investigation and say, look,

he's a former special
operations officer.

He's living in this country.
He's giving interviews.

And this is very natural and obvious

that the Russians were on him
for a long time

because he's publishing books,
articles and doing private
investigations

for private British companies.

And that it's natural
that he was dealt with

by Secret Service,
which is not true.

(OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYING)

The funny thing is, right,

people were, like,
disbelieving of what we'd done.

And then all of a sudden,

this bulletin goes
through newsrooms,

there's been some kind
of event in Salisbury.

(OMINOUS MUSIC)

And literally...

..it changed.

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