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On June 15, 2007, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSS) opened a criminal espionage investigation into allegations that exiled businessman Boris Berezovsky and murdered ex-KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko were British spies. The investigation may strengthen Russian requests for Berezovsky’s extradition, or at least persuade the U.K. to revoke his political asylum status. The new FSS inquiry further complicates a murder investigation that has tarnished, along with other transnational criminal controversies, diplomatic relations between the United Kingdom and Russia.1
1 Steven Lee Myers, Russia Says It Opened Criminal Inquiry Into British Espionage, N.Y. Times, June 16, 2007, at A4, col. 1.