National Post (National Edition)
Pair claim election proof
BELARUSIANS IN THAI JAIL ALLEGE RUSSIA MEDDLING
Apair of self-described sex instructors from Belarus have been stuck in a Thai detention centre for weeks. They say they have evidence demonstrating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign in the United States, and that they have offered it to the FBI in exchange for a guarantee of their safety.
Their claim — that they are targets of a covert Russian operation to silence them because they know too much — might seem outlandish, but their case certainly includes some unusual circumstances.
They have influential enemies in Russia. They were arrested with the help of a “foreign spy,” according to the Thai police, and locked up on what is a fairly minor offence: working without a permit. And the FBI says it tried to talk to the pair, suggesting that U.S. investigators had not dismissed their account.
“They know we have more information,” one of the pair, Alexander Kirillov, 38, told The New York Times in a phone call from the detention centre in Bangkok.
Kirillov said his co-defendant, Anastasia Vashukevich, 27, had angered some powerful people. “They know she knows a lot,” he said.
In February, a top critic of Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, released a video that included footage Vashukevich recorded during a brief affair she had with a Russian tycoon while working as an escort aboard his yacht in 2016. The evidence included photos she posted of the tycoon and his guest, Sergei Prikhodko, a deputy prime minister, and recorded them talking about relations between the U.S. and Russia.
The tycoon, Oleg Deripaska, has close ties with Putin and with Paul Manafort, U.S. President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, who has been indicted on money-laundering charges by Robert Mueller.
The escort and her seduction coach have been held largely incommunicado since March 5. They now face deportation and fear what might happen to them if they are sent home to Russia, where they live, or Belarus.
The two were arrested along with eight others Feb. 25 when plainclothes police officers raided a workshop they were conducting for Russian tourists.
The police arrest report says that a “foreign spy” infiltrated the Russian-language seminar and provided the Royal Thai Police with information about the training — which is not illegal.
High-level officials appeared to take an unusual interest in this case: Six police generals and two colonels had responsibility for the raid. Since the arrests, the government has tried to keep a tight lid on information. A law enforcement official said the FBI tried to speak with the two but was not successful.
A Thai police spokesman, Lt. Col. Krissana Pattanacharoen, would not comment on whether Russia was behind the arrests, but he said it was not unusual for the police to use foreign operatives.
After the pair’s arrest, Kirillov sent a handwritten letter to the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok asking for asylum for all 10 detainees.
Financial records show that firms controlled by Manafort owed millions of dollars to Deripaska. During the 2016 race, Manafort offered to give him private briefings about the campaign, though there is no indication that the tycoon took him up on the offer.
Vashukevich became an escort under the guidance of Kirillov, better known as Alex Lesley. Vashukevich was sent by a Moscow modelling agency to a yacht off Norway along with six other escorts, according to her account. She said she followed Kirillov’s instruction to record all her interactions with her target, the yacht’s owner, who turned out to be Deripaska.
Vashukevich told The Times in a brief interview at the detention centre that she had more than 16 hours of recordings from the yacht, including conversations with three visitors who she believes were Americans.
She has called herself the “missing link” in the Russia investigation.
Her posts from 2016 came to prominence only after Alexei Navalny, a Russian opposition leader, included them in a video in early February that made accusations about official corruption. Navalny also charged that Deripaska had delivered Manafort’s campaign reports to the Kremlin.
Before travelling to Thailand, Kirillov grew worried about repercussions from the exposé and asked a childhood friend, Eliot Cooper, to contact U.S. authorities on his behalf, Cooper said.
Cooper, who lives in Canada, said he called an FBI hotline in February and proposed trading the recordings for the pair’s safety.
“There is no investigation,” Cooper said. “The Americans are not interested. They want them to disappear, and Nastya in particular, because she is a living witness.”
THEY KNOW WE HAVE MORE INFORMATION.