Police knew senior KGB agent in NZ
A former senior KGB agent who turned double agent then fled to the UK has told of an attempt to poison him in Queen St, Auckland.
Boris Karpichkov made the claims, which Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was seeking to confirm yesterday, while appearing on Good Morning Britain in the wake of the poisoning in the UK of double agent Sergei Skripal.
Skripal’s Spanish links have also seen interest re-emerge in the little-known case of a Russian agent who lived in Madrid under a fake Kiwi identity, apparently stolen from a dead baby, for nearly two decades.
Skripal, a former Russian military intelligence officer who was a double agent for the British in the 1990s and early this century, and daughter Yulia, 33, are critically ill after being poisoned in England with a military-grade nerve agent known as Novichok developed in the former Soviet Union.
Karpichkov, a Latvian, was recruited by the KGB. When Latvia became independent after the collapse of the Soviet Union, he joined that country’s intelligence service but continued to work for KGB successor agency the FSB.
After his cover was blown, he managed to slip out of Russia, using a false passport he was given as a KGB officer.
Karpichkov has previously said he lived in New Zealand for more than a year after fleeing the UK in 2006 when his life was threatened by Russian security services. He reportedly used a forged Lithuanian passport.
New Zealand police said yesterday they were ‘‘aware that Mr Karpichkov was in New Zealand between June 2006 and October 2007’’.
‘‘We are currently examining our files to assess what information we may hold about Mr Karpichkov ... it is likely to take some time to complete this assessment.’’
Karpichkov told Good Morning Britain he received a warning by ‘‘burning telephone’’ on February 12, this year, from a FSB operative telling him ‘‘something bad’’ was going to happen to him, Skripal and some other people.
He also talked about the Queen St incident in which, he said, he was approached about 10am by someone who looked like a ‘‘common beggar’’.
‘‘I was just walking, carrying my bag, and just looking left side into shop windows, and just noticed with side vision that some person approached me,’’ Karpichkov said. The person tried to grab his bag.
‘‘Next what I felt was kind of dust thrown into my face. Then beggar just walked away’’.
Karpichkov then almost passed out, his head was spinning and he started sweating. That evening, his nose and eyes were running, his eyes were scratchy and his chest was covered with a red rash.
A doctor told him he had the common flu but in the next two months he lost 30kg of his 90kg.
The prime minister said yesterday that she shared the UK’s concerns over the use of the globally banned nerve agent, and New Zealand had used an international platform to speak out against it.
Ardern said she hadn’t been aware of the incident Karpichkov claimed happened in 2006. However, she had sought advice on it from the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.
When asked if she was concerned that New Zealand may not be exempt from such attacks, Ardern said that was why she was seeking advice.
Meanwhile, another link to the Skripal poisoning to have re-emerged is the case of Russian agent Sergei Cherepanov, who lived in Madrid –
"Next what I felt was kind of dust thrown into my face." Former senior KGB agent Boris Karpichkov on an attempt to poison him in Queen St, Auckland
where Skripal is thought to have been turned by Western intelligence agencies – for nearly two decades under a fake Kiwi identity.
Skripal reportedly took up a position in the Russian embassy in Spain in 1993 or 1994, and is thought to have been recruited by British intelligence in 1995, and given the code name Forthwith.
Also living in Madrid at the time Skripal was there was a 50-something man with a bushy moustache, who went by the name of Henry Frith.
According to Politico, which wrote about him in mid-2016, he had been in Madrid for almost two decades.
He spoke Spanish with a slight accent, which he attributed to having been born in Ecuador to an Ecuadorean mother and a father from New Zealand.
The only trace of a ‘‘Lawrence Henry Frith’’ in New Zealand records was of a boy who died in 1937 in Hamilton, aged 1.
The Frith name may simply have been chosen in a cemetery by a Russian embassy employee in New Zealand, Politico reported.
The commercial registry in Madrid mentioned Henry Frith ‘‘born November 9, 1957 … of New Zealand nationality’’.
Politico said European security services publicised the Frith/ Cherepanov case to draw attention to what an official called a ‘‘dramatic increase’’ in Russian espionage activities in Europe.
It’s not clear what, if any, damage Frith/Cherepanov did to Spain or the rest of the West.
An agent told Politico that illegals such as Frith/Cherepanov were mostly used as messengers because ‘‘official’’ spies who worked out of embassies were under surveillance.