UK police have launched a murder investigation after the death of Russian businessman Nikolai Glushkov in south-west London.
Photo: AFP PHOTO / METROPOLITAN POLICE
Mr Glushkov was found dead at his home in New Malden on 12 March.
Mr Glushkov's death comes in the same week as Home Secretary Amber Rudd announced that a string of deaths on UK soil are to be reinvestigated by the police and MI5 after claims of Russian involvement.
It comes at a time when UK and Russian relations have sunk to fresh lows after the use of a nerve agent on UK soil against a former Russian spy who had previously passed information to Britain, which several world powers have blamed Russia for.
UK police said there was at this stage no evidence linking the death of Mr Glushkov to the attempted murder of the former spy Sergei Skripal, 66, and his daughter Yulia, 33, in Salisbury, police say.
A post-mortem examination revealed Mr Glushkov, who was 68, died from "compression to the neck".
Detectives were keeping an open mind, police said, and appealed for any information that would assist the investigation.
Mr Glushkov is the former deputy director of Russian state airline Aeroflot.
He was jailed in 1999 for five years after being charged with money laundering and fraud.
After being given a suspended sentence for another count of fraud in 2006, he fled to the UK to seek political asylum and became a critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Mr Glushkov also had a close friendship with fellow Russian businessman Boris Berezovsky, who came to the UK in 1999 after falling out with Mr Putin.
Mr Berezovsky was found hanged in the bathroom of his Berkshire home in 2013 and an inquest recorded an open verdict.
BuzzFeed News claimed to have evidence of 14 deaths that were actually murders by the Russian state or mafia allies.
In each of the cases, police investigations and inquests did not find evidence of any crime.
- BBC