Brazilian authorities have opened an investigation into Russian intelligence's use of the country's registration and certificate system to infiltrate and operate in the West. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Brazil's federal police have launched an investigation into failures that allowed Russian agents to use Brazilian documents, after at least two Russian agents with South American passports were apprehended last year.
Poland: Hockey player arrested on suspicion of spying for Russia // Photo: Reuters
Sources familiar with the case told the American newspaper that Brazilian authorities are concerned that more Russian agents using Brazilian documents are in the country, or operating in various parts of the world. The reports come after a Russian agent named Mikhail Miukshin was caught in Norway in October and charged with espionage. The man served as a researcher at Tormaso University in the country under the name Jose Assis Giaria. An investigation by Brazilian authorities showed that the man used a birth certificate issued in a small town in Brazil, apparently of a citizen who died several years ago.
In another case, another Russian citizen named Sergei Cherkasov tried to apply for an internship at the International Criminal Court in The Hague under a false identity and Brazilian documents. The man was apprehended and is currently being held in Brazil on suspicion of forging documents and espionage. Both the United States and Russia have applied for his extradition and Washington hopes he will be handed over, in part to use him for possible prisoner exchanges with Moscow. His investigation revealed that Cherkasov gave a Brazilian civil servant $400 worth of jewelry in exchange for helping him obtain a local birth certificate.
The International Criminal Court in The Hague, photo: AP
In Brazil, it is believed that security failures in the process of issuing identity cards such as a passport stem from the fact that with the help of a local birth certificate, it is possible to obtain a variety of identification documents easily and almost without checking the details appearing on the certificate.
Brazil is not the only South American country dealing with the fallout from the war in Ukraine and Moscow's intervention. Argentine authorities last month announced stricter immigration policies for those arriving from Russia and introduced a clause banning pregnant women from the country from coming to Argentine territory because of the law that allows automatic naturalization for parents whose child was born in the country.
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