United States charges Russian spy who lived in Maryland using forged identity
March 27, 2023 2 Comments
A RUSSIAN INTELLIGENCE OPERATIVE, who lived in Maryland using forged Brazilian identity documents, has been charged with espionage and other crimes by the United States Department of Justice. Victor Muller Ferreira, a Brazilian national, was stopped from entering the Netherlands in June of last year, where he had intended to join the International Criminal Court (ICC) as an intern.
Shortly after Muller was stopped at Amsterdam’s Schiphol International Airport, the Netherlands General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) revealed that he was in fact Sergey Vladimirovich Cherkasov, a 36-year-old Russian citizen. According to the AIVD, Cherkasov had worked for over a decade as an intelligence officer for the Main Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces’ General Staff, which is commonly known in the intelligence field as GRU.
A few days after Cherkasov returned to Brazil, a federal court in Guarulhos, a suburb of Sao Paolo, found him guilty of having used the identity of a dead Brazilian citizen to forge identity papers, which he then used to enter and leave Brazil 15 times over 10 years. The 10-year period had started in 2010, when Cherkasov had entered Brazil using his real Russian identity. But when he left the country a few months later, he did so using the forged identity that had allegedly been provided to him by Russian intelligence. Having examined the charges against Cherkasov, the court jailed him for 15 years.
Now the United States Department of Justice has charged Cherkasov with a list of new crimes, including acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign power and repeatedly carrying out visa, bank and wire fraud. The charges resulted from an investigation that was conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s counterintelligence division, in coordination with the Bureau’s Washington Field Office.
The charges stem from the years 2018-2020, when Cherkasov used his forged Brazilian identity to enroll as Master’s student at the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. Cherkasov successfully completed his graduate degree in 2020. Two years later, he left for the Netherlands, where he hoped to enter employment in the ICC.
► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 27 March 2023 | Permalink
The director of Argentina’s spy agency has been accused by security officials in Brazil of being implicated in a multi-million dollar money-laundering scandal that involves dozens of senior officials across Latin America. The allegations were made in the context of the so-called “operation car wash”, known in Portuguese as Operação Lava Jato. The term refers to a money-laundering probe that began in 2014, following allegations of illegal financial practices by a number of private import-export companies in Brazil. Soon, however, Lava Jato led to the exposure of large-scale corruption, nepotism and bribing practices at the core of Brazil’s state-owned oil company Petrobras. Today, four years later, the constantly expanding investigation has implicated nearly 200 people —many of them well-known politicians— in numerous Latin American countries, including Mexico, Peru and Venezuela.
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Brazil judges block international requests to extradite alleged Russian spy
July 31, 2023 by Joseph Fitsanakis 1 Comment
Within a few days of his expulsion, Dutch and American counterintelligence had outed Cherkasov as an intelligence officer of the Main Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces’ General Staff, which is commonly known as GRU. Cherkasov is alleged to have built his forged identity over several years, while operating in Brazil and the United States. Upon returning to Brazil, Cherkasov was sentenced to 15 years in prison for using forged Brazilian identity documents.
Last week, Cherkasov’s sentence was reduced to 5 years, after a court in Brazil dropped some of the initial charges that had been filed against him by the Brazilian government prosecutor’s office. Cherkasov’s lawyers are now arguing that their client does not pose a flight risk and should therefore be allowed to serve the remainder of his sentence outside of prison, wearing an electronic tagging device.
These recent developments are of concern to authorities in the United States. The latter have filed an extradition request for Cherkasov, claiming that he spent several years as a graduate student in an American university while using his forged Brazilian identity papers. During that time, Cherkasov is alleged to have repeatedly communicated with his Russian intelligence handlers, supplying them with information about American politics and policy.
However, the Ministry of Justice and Public Security of Brazil said on Friday that Washington’s extradition request had been denied and that Cherkasov would remain in Brazil. The apparent reason for the denial is that Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court had already approved a similar extradition request for Cherkasov, which was filed in April by the Russian government. Moscow claims that Cherkasov is wanted in Russia for narcotics trafficking. The Russians also deny that the alleged spy worked for the GRU or any other government agency.
Yet, despite claims to the contrary, the Brazilian government appears to be essentially stalling on Moscow’s extradition request. On Friday, Flávio Dino, who serves as Minister of Justice under the administration of President Inácio Lula, stated that Cherkasov would continue to serve his prison sentence in Brazil until further notice. In the United States, CBS News reported that Cherkasov’s extradition to Russia would take place “only […] after the final judgment of all of his cases here in Brazil” has been issued, according to the accused spy’s lawyers.
► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 31 July 2023 | Permalink
Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Brazil, espionage, extraditions, GRU, News, Russia, Sergey Cherkasov, Sergey Vladimirovich Cherkasov, United States, Victor Ferreira, Victor Muller Ferreira