I wonder if the “famous people always die in threes” applies in Russia because it appears that according to some the Litvinenko poisoning is beginning to inspire a rash of mysterious illnesses among Russia’s rich and famous. Or so implies the Financial Times in regard to the “mysterious illness” that has befallen Yegor Gaidar.

One should say that FT didn’t come up with this all on its own. The Litvinenko connection is being fed to the press by Anatoly Chubais. “It is unquestionable for me that a mortal construction of Politkovskaya, Litvinenko and Gaidar, which did not come into being by miracle, would have been exceedingly attractive for supporters of unconstitutional scenarios envisioning a change of power in Russia by force,” Chubais noticed.

According to reports, Gaidar fell violently ill after eating breakfast at a Dublin hotel.

“I rushed after him and found him lying on the floor, unconscious. He was vomiting blood and also bleeding from the nose for about 35 minutes,” Ms Genieva [who organized the Dublin conference Gaidar was scheduled to attend] said. Mr Gaidar was taken to James Connolly Memorial Hospital in Blanchardstown, where he was treated overnight. The following morning, Mr Gaidar had asked to be discharged and, after a visit to the Russian embassy, was put on a flight back to Moscow.

Gaidar declined to comment on whether his illness is the result of any nefarious wrongdoing.

I’m surprised that Suleiman Kerimov’s, (who happens to be a Russian businessman and the 72^nd richest person in the world) wrapping his Ferrari around a tree in Paris hasn’t generated in theories of sabotage.

Update: It seems that the conspiracy laded shit storm is already starting.

I have no idea what to make of this report. That is except that this whole affair is getting stranger and stranger . . . and if true, scarier and scarier.

Litvinenko ’smuggled nuclear material’

By Cahal Milmo, Peter Popham and Jason Bennetto

Published: 29 November 2006

Alexander Litvinenko, the poisoned former Russian agent, told the Italian academic he met on the day he fell ill that he had organised the smuggling of nuclear material out of Russia for his security service employers.

Mario Scaramella, who flew into London yesterday to be interviewed by Scotland Yard officers investigating Mr Litvinenko’s death, said Mr Litvinenko told him about the operation for the FSB security service, the successor to the KGB.

Police said that Mr Scaramella, who met Mr Litvinenko at a sushi bar in London on 1 November to discuss a death threat aimed at both of them, was a potential witness. He was being interviewed at a “secure location” in London but was not in custody.

The Health Protection Agency said that eight people had been referred to a clinic in London for tests for exposure to polonium-210, the radioactive substance that killed Mr Litvinenko. It declined to say whether Mr Scaramella was among them.

A post-mortem examination will be carried out on Mr Litvinenko on Friday.

In an interview with The Independent shortly after the poisoning became public, Mr Scaramella said that Mr Litvinenko, a friend and professional contact since 2001, told him he had masterminded the smuggling of radioactive material to Zurich in 2000. There have long been concerns that turmoil in Russia and other former Soviet states after the fall of Communism created an international black market in radioactive substances.

Read on . . .