Nikolai Glushkov was preparing for legal proceedings over claims that he looted over $100 million from Aeroflot when he served as the airline’s Deputy Director for Finance in the mid-1990’s. He had run out of money and was preparing to represent himself — until he was “strangled to death with a dog leash.” The Russian government has impugned the circumstances around his death, while the British government is investigating murder and notes that “a black van [was] seen near his home the night he was strangled.” Had his trial proceeded he was prepared to testify that Aeroflot was the centerpiece of Russia’s clandestine services. The airline, Ms. Litvinenko said her husband told her, was a centerpiece of the Russian spy services, which since Soviet days had used its global network of offices and air routes…
