Ex-spy: I was poisoned on Queen St

Derek Cheng

A former Russian spy who took refuge in New Zealand says he was the victim of a poison attack in Auckland that made his body hair fall out and caused him to lose 30kg.

Boris Karpichkov, a former KGB agent, spent 15 months in New Zealand in 2006 and 2007 after working as a double agent in the 1990s and passing data to the West.

He said he was walking down Queen St when someone threw powder in his face and he became seriously unwell. Karpichkov told Good

that he received a message by “burning telephone” on February 12 from a person working for the Russian secret service FSB, the successor to the KGB.

The message warned that he, Sergei Skripal and others would be targeted, but he did not report it because he did not take it seriously.

But he was shocked when Skripal, a former Russian spy and informant for Britain’s intelligence service, and his daughter were attacked with a nerve agent on March 4 in Salisbury. They remain critical in hospital.

Asked who he thought was responsible, Karpichkov said: “The Russian Secret Service, FSB specifically.”

Karpichkov claims to have been poisoned on Auckland’s Queen St one morning in November 2006.

“I was walking, carrying my bag, and just noticed with side vision that some person approached me. He looked like a beggar and tried to grab my bag. Next what I felt was a kind of dust thrown into my face.

“I walked around 1500m and then almost passed out because my head started spinning. I started sweating.”

He said he was a 90kg “fat man” when he arrived in New Zealand, but after the attack he lost 30kg and his body hair started falling out. His health has since stabilised.