Mario Scaramella, the second person to test positive for polonium poisoning, is an incongruous figure at the very center of the Litvinenko mystery. A self-styled security consultant, he claims to be an expert in espionage and nuclear weapons and also refers to himself as an academic but has no current affiliations to any university or institution.
Until becoming involved in the Litvinenko case, he was best known in Italy as a consultant to the Mitrokhin commission, set up by Silvio Berlusconi's former government to investigate the infiltration of Italy by KGB spies during the cold war.
Scaramella was introduced to Litvinenko three years ago and has said he did not eat anything during his Nov. 1 meeting with Litvinenko because he had eaten earlier in the day, and only drank from a glass of water.
After Litvinenko became ill, Scaramella went to a hospital in Rome and was checked by medics given the all-clear. He told reporters in Italy that he had gone voluntarily to the British embassy in Rome to speak to the authorities about his relationship with Litvinenko.
Since then, a number of accusations have been hurled at him. La Repubblica newspaper accused him of telling lies in connection with his activities at the Mitrokhin commission and questioned his credentials.
They have queried his CV, which lists affiliations with institutions as diverse as Rosario University in Colombia, Stanford and Greenwich universities in the US, and Tamil Nadu University in India, as well as his claims to have written a paper for NASA.
One leftwing former member of the Mitrokhin commission claimed Scaramella's CV was questioned by the panel "so he promptly presented a second, completely different one, which was accepted."
Italy's Corriere della Sera has reported that Scaramella and Mitrokhin commission chief Paolo Guzzanti, a senator with Berlusconi's Forza Italia party, discussed digging up evidence to prove that Romano Prodi, Italy's prime minister, was "a KGB man."
The commission was wound up in March without exposing any leftwing figures -- despite months of press speculation led by the Berlusconi family newspaper Il Giornale. Prodi has since said that he may take court action in connection with the charges.
Scaramella is being investigated in Italy on two counts of breaching secrecy rules in the Mitrokhin affair and possible involvement in arms trafficking, in a case involving stolen uranium that he himself reported to the authorities.
Italian reports have also said that he had made regular visits to the FSB -- Russia's state security organization -- in Moscow and was a close associate of Viktor Kolmogorov, deputy head of the FSB. Scaramella claims that his Moscow visits were connected to his work for the Mitrokhin commission, and that far from working for the FSB he believed he was as a target.
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