Secret signs from Putin put overstayer on edge

A Russian overstayer who claims he has been harassed by spies sent after him by Vladimir Putin has been granted asylum.

The 45-year-old man came to New Zealand in 2005 on a onemonth visa and has lived here illegally ever since.

While the Immigration and Protection Tribunal dismissed most of his claims about spies tracking him down here, it did accept he had clashed with the former KGB in the past and it could arouse official suspicions if he was deported to Russia after effectively being missing for 13 years. Tribunal member Louise Moor said he was being granted asylum because of mental health issues resulting from a beating by KGB agents in the 1990s and because he could face torture and charges of treason if he returned to Russia.

The man has been given name suppression by the tribunal to protect him.

He told the tribunal of a decades-long cat-and-mouse game with Russian authorities which he claimed started in 1991 when dating his future wife, a Bulgarian, who was the daughter of a KGB agent.

His mother-in-law passed secret information to him as an insurance policy in case the KGB decided to kill her, he said.

He also said the KGB later tried to recruit him to spy on his mother-in-law but he refused – which lead to a beating by KGB agents, a claim the tribunal believed. Psychologist Hans Laven, told the tribunal the man showed signs of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) which had likely come about from that beating. The man tried to claim asylum in Germany in 1992 but was rejected and left there in 1995, eventually living in the Ukraine.

In 2003, he tried to sue Amer- ican Express for $20,000 but said he then feared the Ukrainian authorities would deport him to Russia because of that case, so he fled to New Zealand in 2005.

He entered New Zealand on a one-month visa to investigate business opportunities and continued staying after the visa lapsed. He made a life for himself here but told the tribunal he avoided public healthcare, emails and other electronic forms of communication out of fear that Russian agents would find him.

But the game was up when police, investigating an unrelated accident in his neighbourhood in June 2016, knocked on his door and discovered he was an overstayer. He was served a deportation notice and that is when he claims he once more appeared on the Russian intelligence services’ radar. He told the tribunal Russian agents tracked him to his house and began a campaign of intimidation.

Cigarette butts were left on his doorstep three times in 2017 as was a plastic star.

According to his testimony ‘‘cigarette butt’’ was an old nickname for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Then he found a condom on his back doorstep, another sign he attributed to Russian involvement, the tribunal ruling said.

‘‘When you call someone a condom in Russia, it is a huge sign of disrespect.’’

The most serious incident was alleged to have happened in May 2017 when his house was broken into but nothing was stolen.

A window which the man had gone to great lengths to secure, including taping it from the inside and putting boxes against it, had been left open.

His computer had also stopped working and a printer cartridge was missing, he told the tribunal.

The tribunal granted the man asylum, saying it did so because of a combination of psychological and legal factors.

Moor said his time in New Zealand left a large gap in his records which, when combined with his paranoia and Ukrainian origins, could appear suspicious to Russian authorities.