LONDON (Reuters) – Russian businessman Nikolai Glushkov, who was found dead in 2018, was strangled by an unknown person in his home in south-west London, a British coroner has ruled, the BBC reports.
Glushkov fled Russia after being accused of fraud during his time as deputy director of the Aeroflot airline, and was granted political asylum in the United Kingdom in 2010, the BBC reported on Saturday.
Senior coroner Chinyere Inyama has ruled that Glushkov was killed illegally.
A pathological report summarized for the court said the injuries “could be consistent with a neck grip being applied from behind, and the attacker being behind the victim,” the BBC reported.
The British police asked for information as part of a murder investigation and said they were locating a black car that was seen around his house but which had never been located.
“It was from the outset an extremely complex, challenging investigation,” said Commander Richard Smith, chief of the London Police’s terrorism order.
“Officers have made hundreds of statements and gathered a large amount of evidence, but so far no arrests have been made,” he said in a police statement on Friday.
The police against terrorism are leading the investigation into the death. It took place shortly after the attempted murder of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the English city of Salisbury, although detectives said there was nothing linking the events.
Glushkov was also a collaborator of the late Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky, who was found dead in March 2013 with a scarf tied around his neck in the bathroom of a luxury mansion west of London.
His family was afraid that he might have been killed by enemies from Russia. British police and forensic experts concluded that it was suicide, although a British judge reached a public verdict on Berezovsky’s death in 2014, saying he could not be sure whether the Russian had killed himself or was the victim of foul play.
Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Edited by Frances Kerry