A secret service employee whose naked body was found inside a bag that was padlocked from the outside was murdered on the orders of the Kremlin, according to an ex-Home Office Minister and a Russian spy who defected to Britain.
The death of Anglesey-born Gareth Williams, 31, in 2010 was ruled by a coroner to be an unlawful killing by person or persons unknown.
Williams, who was a child prodigy in mathematics, was employed by GCHQ, the UK’s eavesdropping agency based at Cheltenham. His decomposing body was found inside a bag in the bathroom of his London flat. At the time of his death, he was on secondment to MI6 and had been involved in investigating financial corruption involving Russia.
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Now Norman Baker, who was a Liberal Democrat minister in David Cameron’s coalition government, and Boris Karpichkov, a former KGB major who fled to Britain in 1998, have claimed in a podcast that Williams was killed because he was close to identifying a mole in the UK security services.
Baker says: “Find me, other than some sort of stooge in Scotland Yard, someone who can tell you with a straight face that Gareth Williams sent into his bathroom, shut the door, turned the lights off, put himself in a bag. I’ve always been interested in matters to do with security, and have always been interested in spotting elephants in rooms that other people want to ignore.
“The idea that Gareth Williams had died alone was simply impossible. First of all his body was found in a holdall with the zip closed and padlocked from the outside, with a key lying under his body.
“The idea that he could place himself in that situation and lock the bag from the outside and put the key under his body is just simply beyond belief. We have to assume that was done for a purpose by another body, an external third party.
“My view on the evidence we’ve been able to accumulate and that has been made public is that it was probably the Russians who did so. Gareth Williams had Russian links in the sense that he was investigating Russian dealings in the City of London as part of his work for GCHQ initially and subsequently on secondment to MI6.
"We know that Russians are involved in money laundering in the City. I imagine he was looking into their activities as well as others.”
Baker believes that Williams had learnt the identity of a mole who was inside the British secret services. He tells the podcast: “The scenario which I think fits the facts is that he was talking to a Russian in his flat. It then became clear that he knew the identity of this alleged Russian mole in GCHQ.
“He was then disposed of by the Russians, firstly by drugging his wine in order that he was unconscious. There was then an injection of a combination of lethal substances into his ear. He was then placed into the bag in the bath.”
Karpichkov, who after the fall of the Soviet Union worked as a double agent for the Latvian security service and for the FSB, the successor agency to the KGB, told the podcast: “One of my friends contacted me to say, ‘Do you believe that Gareth Williams died himself without anyone else involved?’
“This prompted my huge interest in that case. Gareth Williams was part of some team which investigated some illegal activities of certain very powerful individuals linked with the Kremlin, involving multi-billion money laundering operations.”
Asked how Williams was killed, Karpichkov said: “It’s only my theory - I think he was poisoned - probably incapacitated, making him unable to move.”
Karpichkov lived close to Williams in the Pimlico district of London. He said: “One day I spotted Russian diplomatic cars around Pimlico. Was it a coincidence? I don’t think so. If the Russian security services feel that their sources are under threat, they will take any steps which are needed, including extra-judicial killing - they call it liquidation - without any hesitation.
“At one point I was ordered to kill one of my subordinates in the Latvian security services by the FSB using deadly poison. I disobeyed - and compromised without killing anyone. Where a serious intelligence field operation might be exposed, they will take any steps including murder, if necessary.
“The British security services and British law enforcement obviously failed to do anything. One of the main tasks of any law enforcement and security service is prevention.
“It was a complete failure to protect those who had to be protected. It was not just uncomfortable for the British security services. It was a huge embarrassment.”
The series also investigates other theories about Williams’ death.
* Man in a Bag is a seven-part Audible Original podcast series narrated by journalists Jonathan Maitland and Vanessa Bowles.
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