Friends call for new probe into 2012 death following revelations about killing of Alexei Navalny

Alexander Perepilichny, a whistleblower on organised crime and corruption in Russia, collapsed and died while jogging near his home in Weybridge, Britain, in 2012. Photo / YouTube

Britain is facing calls to reopen the botched investigation into the death of a Russian businessman who died with similar symptoms to those of Alexei Navalny.

Alexander Perepilichny, a whistleblower on organised crime and corruption in Russia, collapsed and died while jogging near his home in Weybridge, Surrey, rel="">in 2012.

An inquest in 2018 found that the 44-year-old was likely to have died of natural causes, but said he may have been poisoned, with the coroner blaming Surrey police blunders for a lack of evidence.

Perepilichny suffered a bout of vomiting before his death, similar to Navalny, a critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin who died in 2024 while languishing in an Arctic penal colony.

On Sunday, the United Kingdom revealed that Navalny was killed with a rare and exotic poison dart frog toxin, prompting calls from Perepilichny’s allies for his case to be reopened.

Bill Browder, who helped Perepilichny to expose a US$230 million ($381m) money-laundering operation in Russia, told the Telegraph he was struck by the similarities between the two deaths.

Browder, an American-British financier who successfully lobbied for the creation of the Magnitsky Act, which sanctions Russian human rights abusers, said: “We were trying to determine what type of poison was used on Alexander Perepilichny in 2012, and with this new information on the Navalny poisoning, it has many similarities. It’s a shame that the law enforcement authorities in Surrey were so quick to conclude that it wasn’t a suspicious death and therefore [did] not preserve the evidence.

“It would have been nice to know what really killed him. In light of this new evidence in the Navalny case and all the suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of Alexander ... I would hope that the UK would reopen the case that they so negligently closed for ‘lack of crime’.”

The 2018 inquest heard that crucial evidence, including the contents of Perepilichny’s stomach, had been lost or disregarded, deepening the mystery over his death. The inquest also heard that Surrey police failed to check CCTV from the area in which Perepilichny collapsed.

Ultimately, the inquest found that he probably died of natural causes, caused by Sudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome, though the coroner said he could not “completely eliminate all possibility he was poisoned”.

Navalny, the Russian opposition leader and arch-critic of Putin, died suddenly in a Siberian penal colony on February 16, 2024, while he was serving a 19-year prison sentence.

On Sunday, Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden said in a joint statement that they had identified a rare toxin that was used to murder him.

The conclusions were based on UK-led analysis of tissue samples from his remains, which were studied at the Porton Down research centre in Wiltshire.

The United States was not a signatory to the joint statement, which identified the toxin used to kill Navalny as a synthetically created version of epibatidine, first discovered in Ecuadorian frogs. Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State, said he was aware of the “troubling” statement and had no reason to question its findings.

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