A Russian millionaire could have been "rubbed out" if he had been a British spy, an inquest has heard.

Alexander Perepilichnyy, 44, collapsed and died while jogging near his home in Weybridge in 2012.

He had been helping UK-based campaigner Bill Browder's Hermitage Capital Investment to expose a 230 million US dollar (£142 million in November 2012) money-laundering operation.

Coroner Nicholas Hilliard QC has been examining whether the wealthy businessman was murdered with poison or died of natural causes.

As the inquest resumed, a lawyer demanded the Government come clean about whether Mr Perepilichnyy had been involved with British intelligence or not.

Bob Moxon Browne QC, for life insurers Legal and General, was responding to a Government bid for sensitive information to be kept secret in the "national interest".

He said: "My concern was always, so far as this PII (public interest immunity) was concerned, around the single issue which is whether or not British police or the Government have evidence that Mr Perepilichnyy was prior to his death working for or in contact with British intelligence."

He argued there should be an exception to the rule of neither confirming nor denying contact with security services in this case.

He cited the poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal which "demonstrates the lengths to which the Russian state are prepared to go to make an example or punish people perceived as enemies, traitors or turncoats".

He went on: "For Mr Perepilichnyy, the evidence we have heard arguably if not certainly falls into the same bracket."

The public was told of Alexander Litvinenko's role with British intelligence after he too was poisoned, the inquest heard.

If it also was true in the case of Mr Perepilichnyy, it would be "very powerful evidence indeed that he might have been in special danger from those who wish him ill because of the perception he was a traitor or a turncoat or enemy of Russia".

Mr Moxon Browne questioned whether it would be beyond credibility that Mr Pereplichnyy was "rubbed out" if he was "in the bosom of British intelligence".

He urged the coroner not to automatically pay "lip service" to the rule of not confirming secret service contact, saying it was not appropriate in this case.