This was a strange decision, but it is possible she had already made valuable contacts under that identity and did not want to lose them. It seems that an earlier attempt to pass off “Rivera” as a Peruvian citizen failed: an official Peruvian document from 2006 notes that her application for citizenship was rejected as fraudulent.Īpparently, unfazed by the setback, the GRU then relaunched the “Kuhfeldt Rivera” identity with a Russian passport. The unusual thing about “Rivera” is that she travelled on a Russian passport, when usually illegals disguise their links to Russia or the Soviet Union. He had apparently spent a decade preparing his identity, including stints studying in Ireland and the US, and was suspected of trying to infiltrate the international criminal court in The Hague. In June, the Netherlands deported a man arriving on a Brazilian passport in the name of Viktor Muller Ferreira, accusing him of being a Russian illegal named Sergey Vladimirovich Cherkasov. Some GRU illegals only travel abroad for quick, short-term missions and change identities regularly, while others like “Rivera” spend years inhabiting the same cover identity. I miss everything, but I’m trying to breathe,” she wrote. “It’s the truth I must finally reveal … Hair is growing now after chemo, very short but it’s there. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. For more information see our Privacy Policy. Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. ![]() Two months after her sudden departure from Naples, she posted a Facebook status in Italian, apparently as a way of explaining her disappearance and silence. She does not appear to have left Russia again. It seems “Rivera” was withdrawn by her bosses, who feared that other operatives with similar passport numbers could be compromised. The previous day, Bellingcat and its Russian investigative partner, the Insider, published an article on the two Salisbury poisoners, who travelled under the cover identities Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov, noting irregularities in their passport data suggesting they had security services links. He also discovered that on 15 September 2018, “Rivera” bought a ticket from Naples to Moscow. ![]() Looking more closely at “Rivera”, Grozev found that she travelled on several Russian passports with serial numbers in a range used by other known GRU operatives, including an officer who had been indicted for the alleged novichok poisoning of the Bulgarian arms dealer Emilian Gebrev, and another GRU officer reportedly involved in the attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury in 2018. Most had Russian names, but one stood out: Maria Adela Kuhfeldt Rivera. Grozev searched for Russian passport numbers in ranges known to have been used by GRU operatives, and found numerous hits. Photograph: Supplied by BellingcatĬhristo Grozev, Bellingcat’s CEO and lead investigator, said in an interview that he had first found the trail of a possible GRU illegal when he was looking at a leaked database of border crossings logged by Belarusian border guards and provided by a group of hackers in opposition to the regime of Alexander Lukashenko. ![]() ‘Rivera’ (pictured right) took a one-way flight to Moscow the day after Bellingcat published a joint article suggesting the 2018 Salisbury novichok poisoning suspects were GRU operatives. Traditionally, illegals have been extremely hard for counterintelligence agencies to find, but in a world of biometric data, facial recognition software and open source investigation possibilities, it has become harder for Russia to keep its illegals below the radar. One Nato employee told the investigators that he had a brief romantic relationship with “Rivera”. Her acquaintances said that by taking on the role of secretary at the Naples branch of the international Lions Club, she was able to befriend many Nato staff and other affiliates. She set up a jewellery boutique called Serein and led an active social life. Posing as “Rivera”, the illegal moved between Rome, Malta and Paris, eventually settling in Naples, home of Nato’s Allied Joint Force Command, around 2013. Sometimes, they stay living in their fake identities for decades. Moscow’s intelligence agencies have used illegals since the early Soviet period. “Rivera” was what the intelligence community call an illegal, a deep-cover agent trained to pose as a foreigner. In fact, she was a career GRU officer from Russia, according to research by Bellingcat in partnership with a number of media outlets including La Repubblica in Italy and Der Spiegel in Germany, and shared with the Guardian before publication.
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