Files show MP was informant

KGB files smuggled out of Russia reveal a former Labour MP was an informant for the feared Soviet spy agency and was given the codename ‘‘Gerd’’.

The files say the MP was in contact with Yuri Drozhzhin, the same KGB agent who handled former top government official Bill Sutch for several years.

Fairfax Media reported yesterday that Sutch was a 24-year veteran recruit of the KGB before he was acquitted of spying in 1975.

The KGB papers were given to British authorities by KGB defector Vasili Mitrokhin in 1992. But details of KGB activities in New Zealand have only just been made public by the Churchill Archives at Cambridge University.

The Mitrokhin files say an unnamed Labour MP, born in England in 1926, was in contact with Drozhzhin during the KGB agent’s Wellington posting.

He was given the codename ‘‘Gerd’’, and information passed to the KGB said he was also a member of Labour’s executive committee.

The files say that, by the 1970s, New Zealand was ‘‘a base’’ for providing documents for KGB agents around the world.

After initially trawling through graveyards for suitable names for false identities, the KGB changed tactics and looked through electoral rolls for potential passport names.

One KGB agent, know as ‘‘Julien’’, whose real name was Vladimir Largin, used a passport issued under the name Patrick Cosgrove, from Castlecliff, Whanganui.

The agent operated with his wife and both renewed their passports in Europe before ‘‘Julien’’ worked on missions in Argentina, Venezuela, Guyana, Jamaica, Bolivia and Grenada.

The files say three other New Zealand passports were obtained between 1972 and 1974, along with documents from the Statistics Department, vaccination certificates and bank guarantees.

One of the passports was obtained by using a letter on Justice Ministry letterhead and signed by justice minister Roy Jack.

Other letters with Ministry of Foreign Affairs letterhead were also obtained by a KGB agent.