Russian model’s poisoning scare claim in UK may have been hoax: Reports

London, September 20

Days after a Russian model claimed that President Vladimir Putin had tried to kill her as part of the latest poisoning scare to hit the UK town of Salisbury, British police are believed to be investigating the case as a possible hoax plot.

Anna Shapiro, 30, and partner Alex King, 42, had been rushed to hospital on Sunday following the suspected poisoning scare at an Italian restaurant in Salisbury, the town where former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found collapsed after being poisoned with the deadly Novichok nerve agent earlier this year.

It has now emerged that King is a convicted criminal and once hoaxed Britain’s Prince Charles at a film premiere.

Police sources told the BBC that until the man had been spoken to, “we can’t rule anything in or out” and indicated that a hoax plot may be one line of inquiry.

Meanwhile, the couple has been discharged from Salisbury District Hospital and tests for poisons, including Novichok, have been determined as negative.

According to UK media reports, Alex King has been linked with a prank on the Prince of Wales at a film premiere in 2006, getting into a line-up of celebrities greeting the heir to the British throne. He had then said it was part of a 100,000 pounds bet with his employer, Edward Davenport, a convicted fraudster.

In 2004, King admitted three charges of distributing indecent photographs or pseudophotographs — artificial images that appear to be a photograph — of children.

“This is now a routine investigation. The woman from the restaurant has been interviewed once and is likely to be spoken to again. The next step is to speak to the man involved,” Wiltshire Police said on Thursday.

The area around the restaurant had been cordoned off by them on Sunday after reports of two people being taken ill.

On Tuesday, Shapiro told ‘The Sun’ newspaper that she and her husband were the two people targeted with a suspected rat poison and pointed the finger of blame at the Kremlin.

“I was targeted by Putin’s henchmen. They want me dead as I oppose Putin and have turned my back on my country. Russia is capable of anything,” she told the newspaper.

“I’m sure the Russians think I’m a British spy. I know lots of rich businessmen in central London and because I have the accent people make assumptions about me,” she said.

Shapiro, an Israeli citizen of Russian descent, claimed her father was a “general in the Russian Army who played for the military orchestra”.

She said King collapsed in the toilet of the Prezzo restaurant and was “foaming at the mouth”.  

She also then ran to the toilets to be sick and collapsed before the pair — along with a waiter — were rushed to Salisbury District Hospital.

The restaurant, on the High Street in Salisbury, is a short walk from Queen Elizabeth Gardens, which was closed off for investigation after 44-year-old Dawn Sturgess was fatally poisoned by Novichok, the same deadly nerve agent used against the Skripals.

The former spy and his daughter ate at a Zizzi Italian restaurant near Prezzo eatery, which has since been permanently closed.

“Tests have confirmed that the two patients who fell ill in Prezzo restaurant in Salisbury on Sunday evening were not exposed to any kind of nerve agent,” Wiltshire Police had confirmed in a statement earlier this week.

British Prime Minister Theresa May has accused the Russian government of orchestrating the poisoning of the Skripals, most recently releasing CCTV footage of two Russian male suspects seen in the town days before the incident in March.

The same perfume bottle containing the deadly nerve agent was believed to have led to the death of Sturgess months later.

The Russian government has repeatedly denied UK government allegations that the poisoning of the Skripals in Salisbury or Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley in nearby Amesbury was anything to do with the Kremlin. — PTI