The Russian prosecutor general's office completed a joint inquiry with visiting British detectives into the poisoning death of former Russian agent.
MOSCOW: The Russian prosecutor general's office said on Tuesday it had completed a joint inquiry with visiting British detectives into the poisoning death of former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko.
"The Russian prosecutor general has officially completed work based on the investigation request of New Scotland Yard," the statement said, referring to joint interviews of witnesses conducted here from December 5-18.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed that "the final meeting with the British investigators has taken place".
British detectives arrived in Moscow on December 4 to conduct an inquiry into the poisoning murder in London of Litvinenko, though they were not allowed to conduct witness interviews independently.
The prosecutor general's office also said it gave British detectives all materials from investigators' joint questioning of six witnesses in the case, including transcripts of the interviews.
"Both sides decided not to waste time on translation from Russian to English and agreed to the prompt transfer of all the materials," news agency Interfax quoted an "informed source in the Russian capital" as saying.
The group of British detectives was in Moscow trying to unravel the mystery poisoning of Litvinenko, a former Russian federal security service agent who was granted political asylum in Britain, then British citizenship.
He died November 23 after an agonising illness caused by radioactive polonium 210 that began after he met with ex-Soviet army officer Dmitry Kovtun and ex-KGB officer Andrei Lugovoi, at a hotel in London's Mayfair district on November 1.
British and Russian investigators jointly questioned the men, both of whom deny any role in Litvinenko's killing.
A deathbed letter attributed to Litvinenko accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of ordering his poisoning, a charge the Kremlin has hotly denied. The affair has exacerbated existing British-Russian tensions.
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