Police have opened a murder investigation into the death of Russian businessman Nikolai Glushkov, following the results of a pathologist's report.
Shortly after the announcement, a fellow Russian dissident based in the UK, Vladimir Ashurkov, 46, who spoke to a man who was in Nikolai Glushkov's house shortly after the body was discovered, told The National "the instrument of death was a dog-leash – he was strangled".
Police were called to Mr Glushkov's home in New Malden, south-west London late on Monday after the businessman was found dead – reportedly by his daughter, Natalia.
A Metropolitan Police statement said "A special post mortem began on Thursday, 15 March and we received the pathologist report today (Friday, 16 March), which gave the cause of death as compression to the neck."
Mr Glushkov's suspected murder came just two weeks after the poisoning of former FSB agent, Sergei Skripal, 66, and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury with a deadly nerve agent. The two are in a serious condition in hospital.
However, police said there was no evidence to directly link it to the Salisbury poisoning. "At this stage there is nothing to suggest any link to the attempted murders in Salisbury, nor any evidence that he was poisoned."
The 68-year old's death was being investigated by Counter Terror officers due to Mr Glushkov's known associations. He was a friend of billionaire dissident Boris Berezovsky, who died in suspicious circumstances in at his home in 2013. Mr Glushkov also claimed to have met with the suspected killer of former FSB spy Alexander Litvinenko.
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At the time of his death, Mr Glushkov, who was formerly a deputy director of the Russian state airline Aeroflot, was in the process of being sued by the company to the sum of US$99m.