MOSCOW: Russian businessman Andrei Lugovoi charged by Britain with murdering the former Russian agent, Alexander Litvinenko, denied involvement and pointed the finger at a fugitive Russian billionaire and the British secret service.

Mr. Lugovoi told a crowded press conference in Moscow on Thursday that Litvinenko's killing could have been organised by Boris Berezovsky, possibly with the help of the British special services. He said it was "the most trustworthy" theory of Litvinenko's death from poisoning with radioactive Polonium 210 last November.

Mr. Berezovsky had helped his former security guard Litvinenko settle down in Britain in 2001 and paid his bills. However, after Mr. Berezovsky drastically cut his financial support, Mr. Lugovoi said, Litvinenko gathered compromising material against his patron and approached Mr. Lugovoi and his business colleague Dmitry Kovtun with a request to find somebody who would agree to blackmail Mr. Berezovsky.

Mr. Lugovoi claimed that Litvinenko and Mr. Berezovsky had been both recruited by Britain's MI6 intelligence agency, and this helped the two get British citizenship.

"It's hard to get away from the thought that Litvinenko was an agent who had gone out of control of the special services and they got rid of him," he said. Asked whether he had solid evidence of British intelligence involvement in the murder, Mr. Lugovoi confidently replied: "Yes". He said he would pass on the evidence to Russian prosecutors.

Mr. Lugovoi said he considered himself a "victim" and had offered to go to Britain to testify in the Litvinenko case, but British investigators ignored his requests. He suggested British authorities were not interested in knowing the truth and wanted to make him a scapegoat.

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