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 The
last person to meet Alexander Litvinenko before he
succumbed to the agonising effects of radioactive
poisoning is a self-professed expert in nuclear
materials.
 International
'security consultant' Mario Scaramella, who joined
Litvinenko for the now infamous clandestine meeting in a
London sushi bar, headed an organisation which tracked
dumped nuclear waste, including Soviet nuclear missiles
left over from the Cold War.
Litvinenko, an ex-KGB agent who became a
trenchant critic of President Putin's Russia, fell ill
after the sushi lunch - as exclusively revealed by The
Mail on Sunday last week - and died 22 days later from
poisoning by Polonium, a radioactive substance derived
from uranium.
Yesterday other customers of the sushi
restaurant answered an appeal by health agencies for them
to undergo medical checks. Some 200 worried members of the
public came forward, also including customers of a Mayfair
bar where Litvinenko held another meeting on the day he
was poisoned.
Sources revealed last night that renegade
Russian billionaire Boris Berezovsky had also been checked
for radiation. His car, in which he ferried the stricken
Litvinenko to hospital, was also tested. It was further
disclosed that the tycoon has been interviewed twice by
police investigating Litvinenko's death, but not as a
suspect.
Prof Scaramella has strongly denied any
involvement in the murder and Litvinenko's family, who
blame President Putin, say they do not question his
loyalty. Having given an interview to The Mail on Sunday
earlier in the week, Prof Scaramella yesterday said he was
unwilling to say any more because he was 'co-operating
with the authorities'. Earlier, he had acknowledged that
'something very strange is going on'.
Investigations have established that:
• He has a deep knowledge of nuclear
materials and their whereabouts around the globe.
• Although he describes himself as an
environmentalist, he has detailed knowledge of the
activities of Russian agents.
• Some of the institutions listed on his
impressive CV appear to have no record of him, prompting
questions about a career involving a large number of posts
around the globe.
Prof Scaramella was interviewed earlier
last week, in his home city of Naples to respond to
allegations circulating on the internet that he was an
intelligence agent in the pay of several secret services.
Arriving in the lobby of a hotel flanked by two
bodyguards, he produced a professional-looking dossier
detailing his career.
As the meeting progressed, Prof Scaramella
denied he had links to any secret services and became
irritated. "You are sounding like the police,' he said.
"Do not use this information against me."
Prof Scaramella's knowledge of atomic
materials is clear, however. The British Mail on Sunday
newspaper, has discovered that in June last year Italian
police launched an investigation into an alleged plot to
smuggle uranium into the country after being tipped off by
Prof Scaramella.
He told officers that the uranium was
hidden in a suitcase and had originated from an
undisclosed country in the former Soviet Union. Within
just 24 hours, police in Rimini made four arrests.
At the time all Prof Scaramella would say
was: "I was investigating the activities of former KGB
activities in San Marino. "I was also looking into the
trafficking of arms from the former Soviet Union and
possible links with Italian terrorist groups. During this
I was passed a document that said there were former KGB
men in San Marino looking at selling nuclear military
material.
"I told the police that 10kg of uranium was
hidden in a suitcase and on its way to Italy on June 2;
and on June 2 the arrests were made and the uranium found.
It was enriched uranium 90 per cent capable of making a
small atomic bomb. Also an electronic target device
was seized."
The uranium plot came a year after Prof
Scaramella announced that he had information that 20
nuclear warheads had been lost by a Soviet submarine in
the Bay of Naples.
Prof Scaramella told the Mitrokhin
Commission, which investigated KGB activities in Italy,
that he had been passed the information from Russian
intelligence sources.
Scaramella told The Mail on Sunday that his
career began in his hometown of Naples, where he qualified
as a solicitor in 1995. He set up his own company, and
started specialising in environmental law.
In 1996, Prof Scaramella, who is unmarried
with two children, says he started work as a professor of
environmental law at Externado University in Bogota,
Colombia, before moving the following year to the
University of Nuestra Senora del Rosario, also in Bogota.
At the same time, between 1996 and 2000, he also held a
post specialising in environmental crime at the University
of Naples.
 Between
2000 and 2002, Prof Scaramella was secretary general of a
little-known organisation named the Environmental Crime
Prevention Programme. The ECPP describes itself as an
organisation which 'provides environmental protection and
security through technology on a global basis'.
It has offices at the Fucino Space Centre
in Italy to deploy 'aerial surveillance to detect
environmental crimes in Eastern and Southern Europe'.
On its website, the ECPP described itself
as a 'permanent intergovernmental conference' with a
secretariat in Naples and rotating presidencies held by
countries such as Angola and Samoa.
None of the contact details listed for the
organisation on its website work. When Prof Scaramella was
asked where the group's head office was he said there
wasn't one - you had to contact the general secretary, who
currently was a Professor Papadopoulos from California's
San Jose university.
A Dr Perikles Papadopoulos - listed as an
assistant secretary general of the organisation - could
not be reached. And last night, neither the campaign group
Greenpeace, nor the Environment Investigation Agency,
which campaigns against environmental destruction, could
recall working with the organisation.
In 2003 he made the jump from environmental
expert to KGB specialist when he was appointed as a
consultant to the Mitrokhin commission. It was that work
which put him into contact with Litvinenko and led to the
sushi lunch, which he says he arranged to discuss a 'death
list' which named both him and Litvinenko.
Prof Scaramella explained that Professor
Papadopoulos was key to his appointment on to the Italian
parliamentary commission, facilitating a meeting in London
with Italian legal officials setting up the inquiry.
Italy was a nest of CIA and KGB agents
during the Cold War: Washington regarded the
socialist-leaning country as the West European country
most susceptible to influence from Moscow.
Vasili Mitrokhin was a senior archivist for
Russia's foreign intelligence service. His records of the
period have led to inquiries across the globe, including
the UK. One of the conclusions of the Italian inquiry was
that the former Soviet Union was behind the assassination
attempt on the late Pope John Paul II in 1981.
Prof Scaramella explained that he had been
approached by the commission because his career had given
him a passing connection to Russia. "My work involved a
lot of Soviet issues - the dumping of radioactive waste,
which can be detected from space, and the loss of nuclear
devices,' he said.
"I said to them, "I am not an expert on
security services, only nuclear waste." But the commission
said they wanted people from outside to investigate. So in
2003 I looked at the operations of the KGB and Eastern
bloc countries on Italian soil, including the funding of
Italian journalists by the KGB."
In 2004, Prof Scaramella also led an
investigation on the illegal dumping of waste by the mafia
in an Italian lake. Despite being only a civilian
environmental consultant, he led two armed police agents
to a villa where the suspects lived. They were greeted by
a hail of bullets. One mafioso was arrested, and an arms
cache seized.
Scaramella also told us that he also found
time in 1999 to become a visiting scientist at Stanford
University in California, and was made director of a
university Nato programme which involved visiting
Lithuania.
In 2002, at the same time as he says he was
completing his duties for the ECPP, he also started a
school of national security in Colombia to train local
police. The same year, he says he was also based for four
months at Greenwich University in London, again working on
environmental law.
It is hard to corroborate details of
Scaramella's career. A spokesman at the University of
Naples said last night: "There is no record of a Professor
Mario Scaramella working here. He may well have been hired
internally as an independent working within one of the
faculties but our system has no record of him."
And Dr Maria Scaramella, a namesake at the
university, said: "I used to get all this post for him but
I could never actually find him. He was supposed to have
an office on the third floor but I was never able to find
it. He was supposed to have some sort of European funding
for research but I never knew exactly what."
A spokesman for Greenwich University also
said they had no record of him on its books.
None of the American or Colombian
universities responded to messages asking whether Prof
Scaramella had worked for them.
Internet discussion forums have buzzed with
theories about Prof Scaramella this week - the most
damaging claiming that he is a secret service operative
with split loyalties who uses a range of political and
business interests as a front for his activities. But he
insisted: "I have never been to any security service
headquarters or met any acting officers."
 Prof
Scaramella says he struck up an association with
Litvinenko during his work for the Mitrokhin Commission,
and they had met several times before in the Itsu
restaurant to discuss intelligence matters.
He claimed that tip-off from Litvinenko had
helped to foil a bizarre assassination attempt last year
on Paolo Guzzanti, an Italian senator who headed the
Mitrokhin inquiry. It led to the arrest of six Ukrainians
who were said to have been trying to smuggle grenades into
the country hidden inside hollowed-out Bibles.
"He was my friend - that is why he gave me
this,' he said, brandishing a picture of Litvinenko
training as a young KGB officer.
Even Prof Scaramella's father, Amedeo, was
perplexed about his son's career. "I think it's best you
talk to Mario,' he said. "I don't really want to say
anything. He divides his time between Naples and Rome and
he also spends a lot of time overseas. I don't ask too
many questions."
Prof Scaramella said: "I am not willing to
say anything else. I am co-operating with the authorities.
If you want any information ask Scotland Yard."
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