Dominic Lawson: How to squeeze the Russians

I found the following memo – as you do – under a half-finished cup of coffee on the train to Waterloo. Coffee stains made it difficult to read, but it seemed to have come from a person with the single initial, C.

"Prime Minister, you asked us to come up with 'the cheapest possible way to nobble Putin, which will not involve speeches or public acts of any sort by that bastard Miliband'. While we were slightly surprised by this reference to the Secretary of State, we share your view that another of his speeches on the naughtiness of the Russians, and how the EU is really, really serious about it this time, will not do.

You will have observed from today's newspapers how a systematic campaign of financial and legal harassment has caused BP to blink in its battle with the Russian oligarchs. We propose a similar policy.

First of all, we should ask our friends in Switzerland to investigate the affairs of the Gunvor Group. You will recall from an earlier memo that Mr Putin has a very special interest in this company, which now takes commission on about a third of Russia's seaborne crude oil exports. We might not even need help from the Swiss for this, as our most recent investigations have revealed that Gunvor's ultimate holding company is domiciled in the British Virgin Islands.

In case you want to do something less obscure – an eye-catching initiative with which you could be personally associated, if you would pardon the expression – we suggest that you announce a formal investigation into Gazprom's intimations of a bid for Centrica. You will recall that our earlier guidance to Mr Medvedev (who was then chairman of Gazprom) was that we had no principled objections to the Russians taking control of more than half of our gas supply market. Perhaps you could tell him that in the current circumstances we are more likely to allow Mr Ahmedinejad to buy Centrica.

On the subject of Anglo-Russian business partnerships, we should adopt a much tougher vetting procedure for former servants of the Crown offered money to sell their services to Mr Putin's friends. It's not as if they don't have good public sector pensions (thanks, by the way). I am sorry to have to tell you that Sir Francis Richards, the former head of GCHQ, was recently allowed to join the advisory board of a telecoms company owned by Mikhail Fridman – one of the very oligarchs who have just created such havoc for BP's oil business in Russia. You can tell the current head of our secret communications centre that Sir Francis is the last GCHQ boss who will be allowed to work for Mr Fridman, or any other Russian billionaire

We are, as you know, sceptical about Germany's willingness to cause genuine discomfort to Mr Putin's regime. Nevertheless, Chancellor Merkel is much more open to such a course than her predecessor Gerhard Schröder: he is now the chairman of the Nord Stream gas pipeline project designed to pump Gazprom's products subsea directly to Germany, thus reducing Russia's dependence on Poland and Ukraine for transit. We are told that Chancellor Merkel would enjoy making Mr Schröder's life less pleasurable, and would welcome your support in supplying any regulatory or environmental reasons – even genuine ones – as to why the Nord Stream gas project should be blocked.

Now for the most sensitive matter of all – what our American friends call the 'short and curlies department'. Our colleagues in the Metropolitan Police have plenty of evidence that the FSB was involved in the murder of Alexander Litvinenko. As you know, this was the first time since the death of Georgi Markov that one of Her Majesty's subjects has been murdered in this country by a foreign intelligence service. You will also know that the Russian Government has refused even to consider extraditing the chief suspect to face trial in the UK.

We therefore suggest that a public inquest is held into the assassination of Mr Litvinenko. We were impressed with the way that Lord Justice Scott Baker conducted the recent inquest into the deaths of Diana Princess of Wales and Dodi Fayed. He could be most usefully reemployed: you will recall that he kept the Diana inquest going for many months, with the media given complete access to all documentation, and that we were asked to agree that even MI6 officers should be compelled to give evidence in public.

One of the chief witnesses would be Boris Berezovsky; this most voluble of Putin's enemies would need to spend several days in the witness box. As you know, a year ago we expelled a Russian whom we had reason to believe was planning to assassinate Mr Berezovsky. Our most recent information from Russia is that this man has now disappeared – an interesting fact which the inquest will also bring to public attention

The real beauty of this is that such an inquest will have to – as our lawyer friends might put it – go to motive. Mr Litvinenko persistently claimed that FSB agents, and not Chechen rebels, had been behind the bombing of Moscow apartment blocks in 1999, which was used to justify the attack on Chechnya, and which in turn was so helpful to Putin in his campaign to be elected Russian president. You will recall that the journalist Anna Politkovskaya was also murdered following her own investigations into the FSB's role in the Moscow apartment bombings.

Naturally the inquest will not be able to establish as a fact that Putin had Mr Litvinenko murdered; but his standing among his own people – which is what matters most to him – would be deeply damaged by a prolonged and legal public examination into the events behind the Moscow bombings.

Finally, Prime Minister, as per your request, this memo will not be copied to the Foreign Secretary."

You will have concluded, rightly, that this is an invention of a memo; but if something like it doesn't exist, I would be most surprised.

d.lawson@independent.co.uk

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