AS/Jur (2023) 17 involving Russian government officials and the Russian mafia.26 The police regarded the death as nonsuspicious, but an expert later found traces of a deadly plant in his stomach, known to trigger cardiac arrest. British authorities lately classified the documents of this investigation on national security grounds. BuzzFeed, relying on U.S. intelligence sources, quoted a secret report to Congress stating with “high confidence” that Mr Perepilichnyy was assassinated on direct orders of the Kremlin. 22. One month later, the high-rolling property dealer Robbie Curtis, involved in Mr Berezovsky’s affairs, died in an apparent suicide when he tumbled in front of a train for no apparent reason. Other business partners of Mr Berezovsky, Paul Castle and Johnny Elichaoff, lost their lives in apparent suicides, which BuzzFeed News deemed suspicious in the context of Russia’s secret assassination programme. 23. Mr Berezovsky himself, known in Russia as the “godfather of the oligarchs”, fled to the United Kingdom after falling afoul of Mr Putin. He used his wealth to wage a broad public opposition campaign against the ruling establishment in the Kremlin. He declared that he had been subjected to a couple of failed assassination attempts. Eventually, he was found hanged in his bathroom in 2013, which police ruled a suicide, but the coroner recorded an open verdict27. BuzzFeed reported about US intelligence officials suspecting the death of Mr Berezovsky to be rather an elaborate assassination. In a statement to the Russian Duma, Russia's Prosecutor General claimed that British intelligence had Mr Berezovsky killed to prevent him from returning to Russia.28 24. The chain of suspicious deaths of the so-called Berezovzky’s inner circle continued in the following years. Scot Young, once a multimillionaire and fixer to Mr Berezovsky, died in December 2014 after falling from a fourth-floor flat in London, which the BuzzFeed (relying on US intelligence sources) believed to be the work of Russian hitmen targeting him ever since his fortune had vanished in a mysterious Moscow property deal. In November 2015, Mikhail Lesin, Putin’s former media adviser, who had got virtually all Russian media outlets under the Kremlin's control, was found bludgeoned to death in the Dupont Circle hotel in Washington, DC, allegedly by men working for an oligarch close to Mr Putin (according to a leaked report by a British former MI6 officer). Dr Matthew Puncher, the scientist who had measured the fatal dose of radioactive polonium to poison Mr Litvinenko and proved the Russian link, was found stabbed to death at his home in Oxford in 2016. Nikolay Glushkov, a Russian exiled businessperson, ex-deputy director of Aeroflot and a finance manager for AvtoVAZ (back then under Mr Berezovsky’s management), died in March 2018 in suspicious circumstances, which was ruled as an “unlawful killing” with injuries consistent with strangulation.29 25. The murder of the Chechen dissident Umar Israilov, a former bodyguard of Ramzan Kadyrov, is another case of transnational repression that has revealed the so-called Chechen nexus. Mr Israilov received asylum in Austria as a critic of the Chechen government and was willing to testify about the crimes committed by “Kadyrovites”, including Mr Kadyrov himself and Adam Delimkhanov, currently a member of the Russian Duma. In January 2009, Mr Israilov was shot dead after a failed attempted kidnapping, which the Austrian police believed to be ordered by Mr Kadyrov. Austrian courts found three Chechen individuals guilty of accessory to murder, forming a criminal organisation and attempted kidnapping; the shooter had fled.30 26. Yet, after Alexander Litvinenko’s assassination, the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, also known as the “Salisbury attack”, was deemed as the most blatant and dangerous case of transnational repression attributed to Russian authorities. On 4 March 2018, Mr Skripal, a former Russian military officer, and his daughter were poisoned in Salisbury, United Kingdom, using a “Novichok” nerve agent. On 30 June 2018, in Amesbury, two British nationals suffered from the same kind of poisoning (one died), as a result of the recklessness in which the nerve agent container was disposed of after the poisoning in Salisbury. 27. The United Kingdom authorities accused two Russian nationals stating that they were active officers in the Russian military intelligence (GRU). According to Bellingcat, they acted under the orders and command of superior officers in Russia31. Allegedly, the attempted assassination was organised by a secret unit of the Russian GRU, which is reportedly responsible for a series of assassinations and attempts to destabilise European countries, including major operations such as the annexation of Crimea in 2014, destabilisation Report of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights “Refusing impunity for the killers of Sergei Magnitsky”, Doc. 13356, dated 18 November 2013 (rapporteur: Mr Andreas Gross, Switzerland, SOC), paragraphs 105-108. 27 Boris Berezovsky inquest: Coroner records open verdict - BBC News 28 Boris Berezovsky was killed when he decided to return to Russia | Daily Mail Online 29 Nikolai Glushkov: Putin critic 'strangled in London home by third party' - BBC News, 09 April 2021. 30 Austrian court convicts Chechens over dissident’s death – BBC News, 1 June 2011. 31 Skripal Suspect Boshirov Identified as GRU Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga - bellingcat 26 11