Reports:Menatep Chief Was Informant

The mysterious lawyer Mikhail Khodorkovsky brought in to run his empire after he and his partner were jailed last year became an informant for British intelligence only days before he died in a fiery helicopter crash, according to British media reports.

The lawyer, Stephen Curtis, who was the mastermind of the vast web of offshore structures that eventually became Group Menatep, received death threats on a daily basis and feared for his life in the weeks before he died, the Independent newspaper and Channel 4 television reported over the weekend, citing unidentified friends of Curtis.

Curtis' Agusta A109 helicopter slammed into a field about two kilometers east of the Bournemouth airport in southern England at 7:39 p.m. on March 3 as he was returning to his castle, Pennsylvania. He and his pilot were killed.

British civil aviation authorities said Monday that they were still investigating the reasons for the crash. The National Crime Squad would not confirm or deny reports by the Independent and Channel 4 that a high-level criminal inquiry has been opened into the crash.

Curtis was appointed managing director of Group Menatep, the parent company of Yukos, Russia's most valuable oil company, in November, shortly after Khodorkovsky was arrested on charges of tax evasion and fraud. Platon Lebedev, Khodorkovsky's longtime partner and Curtis' predecessor at Menatep, was arrested on similar charges in July. Both men, who are still awaiting trial, deny the charges.

Curtis, who had a long history of involvement with influential businessmen in the Middle East, had been involved with Menatep since 1997 and was instrumental in creating the holding's complicated offshore network, according to documents obtained by The Moscow Times.

According to Channel 4, Curtis approached Britain's National Criminal Intelligence Service with an offer "to provide them with information," but he only managed to meet with his NCIS handler on two occasions before he died.

Channel 4 and the Independent could not say conclusively what kind of information Curtis was offering, or whether it related directly to the Khodorkovsky and Lebedev cases.

Channel 4 reported that friends of Curtis' said he was receiving death threats by telephone daily and was considering selling his London penthouse because it was too well-known.

Group Menatep spokesman Yury Kotler called Curtis' death a "huge loss," but said that he had not heard that Curtis was receiving death threats. He declined to comment further.

A spokesman for NCIS, an intelligence agency that investigates organized crime, declined to comment.

But he said the agency, which houses the London offices of Interpol and Europol, has broad information-sharing agreements on issues like money laundering with a number of countries, including Russia.

In May 2003, for example, a delegation of NCIS officials traveled to Moscow to sign an information-sharing agreement with the Financial Monitoring Committee, which Russia created to combat money laundering.

Exiled billionaire Boris Berezovsky cryptically told Channel 4 in English that there were "a lot of strange coincidentals" regarding the crash. "I don't like strange coincidentals," he said.

Berezovsky could not be reached for comment Monday, but his spokesman said his boss had nothing more to add.

Details of the crash have begun to emerge, but the exact cause is still unknown.

Officials at the Air Accident Investigation Branch, which is handling the investigation, issued a special bulletin earlier this month with very cursory details of the crash, but cautioned that a final ruling on the cause could take months.

After requesting permission to land, the pilot reported an unspecified problem and lost control of the helicopter during its final approach to the airport, according to the bulletin.

The pilot was in direct radio contact with the visual controller at the airport for the last 29 seconds of the flight, but did not describe the problem, it said.

Witnesses have said they heard the sound of the helicopter's rotor cut out. The helicopter then struck the ground nose-first at high speed, exploding on impact and sending a fireball 10 meters into the air. The bodies of Curtis and his pilot, Matthew Radford, 34, were badly burned and had to be identified from DNA samples, which took nearly three weeks.

Although early reports had said the helicopter appeared to hit a power line during descent, a spokeswoman for Southern Electric, the local electricity and gas distributor, said they were untrue.

"We were called because the helicopter had come down next to some electricity wires, but it was confirmed that it did not come in contact with them there," said Jennifer McGregor, a press officer at Southern Electric. "There was no involvement there."

John Hayes, director of air safety at Airclaims Ltd., a British-based aviation consulting firm, said the report itself does not appear to indicate anything more than a tragic accident. "Based on what is in the public domain, I see no reason to think of sabotage," he said.

Hayes said that helicopter crashes do not often result in large fires, but "the fact that there's a fire itself shouldn't suggest anything untoward."

According to Channel 4, Curtis was prepared to die and requested fireworks at his funeral. The station said he had a rare blood disease and hoped to live until the age of 50. He was 45 when he died.

Catherine Belton contributed to this report.