Yevgeny Chichvarkin, a former mobile phone tycoon, has lived in the UK for almost a decade, after fleeing Russia in 2009, and has become an active anti-Putin campaigner. He had never considered hiring private security guards, but the opening of a murder investigation into the death of fellow exiled Russian businessman Nikolai Glushkov has prompted him to reassess how much danger he might be facing.
“We’ve been discussing it. If you do it, you have to have it 24/7, for everyone. It costs really big money to do it properly,” Chichvarkin said. “For the moment we haven’t decided.” He knew Glushkov a little and was shaken by his death. He assumes he will be on the list of Russian exiles the Metropolitan police are beginning to contact to talk to about security, but has yet to hear from anyone.
Chichvarkin combines running a Mayfair wine business, Hedonism, with anti-Putin campaigns for the Russian expatriate community. On Sunday, he organised a protest outside the Russian embassy in central London, where Russians were queueing to vote in the presidential election.
He suspects his political activity has attracted the interest of the FSB, Russia’s security agency, and is increasingly uneasy about his personal safety. He is particularly concerned about how office laptops have been going missing in odd circumstances. Two weeks ago, his assistant had her laptop stolen from her bag in Soho. It was the computer he had been using to send donations via PayPal to the Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny. Chichvarkin thinks he has sent about £100,000 in small amounts to support Navalny’s political fund; Navalny is barred from standing in the presidential election following a fraud conviction that many believe was trumped up to prevent him from mounting an electoral challenge to Putin.
Twice when his assistants have travelled back to London from Russia in recent months, they have found that that their suitcases have been lost in transit, then recovered by the airline 24 hours later. When they were finally delivered, there were indications that the bags had been searched and the laptops inside tampered with.
For more read the full of article at The Guardian
