Posted on June 30, 2010 - by Venik

Russian spy ring: Hunt for Canadian who skipped bail in Cyprus

Police issue arrest warrant after Christopher Metsos, alleged spy ring paymaster, failed to report to a police station

An international hunt is under way after Christopher Metsos, the alleged paymaster of the deep cover Russian spy ring, skipped bail in Cyprus.

The Cypriot police issued an arrest warrant when Metsos failed to report to a police station in Larnaca, a condition of his bail after he was detained on an international arrest warrant issued by the FBI.

However, the Americans, who were astonished that Metsos was freed on bail in the first place, will be working on the assumption that he has been whisked out of the country by the Russian intelligence service. One potential route of escape is via the Turkish-run enclave in northern Cyprus which is not recognised by the US or most other countries.

Metsos, 56, is alleged to be the go-between for the 10 other alleged Russian agents in the spy ring. He is accused of receiving money from a Russian agent then burying it in a park in northern Virginia for the other spies to retrieve.

Last night Michalis Papathanasiou, his lawyer in Cyprus, said: “I haven’t heard from him at all. He had agreed to call me between 3pm and 4pm this afternoon but failed to do so. How can I represent him if I have no instructions?”

Metsos’ disappearance could further sour relations between the US and Russia over the arrests just as both sides were seeking to play down the possibility of a major diplomatic rift.

The Russian foreign ministry at first criticised the arrests of the 11 and the FBI claims of an espionage ring as “baseless and improper”. It hinted that ties could suffer, days after Barack Obama declared a new era in relations during a visit to Washington by the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev.

The Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin, told the former US president, Bill Clinton, that the American police were “out of control” and said he hoped the arrests would not reverse “all the positive gains”. The foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said the alleged spies had “not committed any actions directed against US interests”.

But within hours both sides were dismissing the possibility that the breaking up of the alleged spy ring would set back relations. Today the Russian foreign ministry said that it expects the arrests “will not negatively affect Russian-US relations”. The US state department echoed the sentiment. “We’re moving towards a more trusting relationship,” said a state department official, Philip Gordon. “We’re beyond the cold war.”

Although the Russians initially suspected that the timing of the arrests might have been designed to undermine disarmament talks, American officials said it was driven by FBI concerns that one or two of the suspected spies was about to leave the country and would not return.

Part of the reason for the retreat may be the growing scepticism in Russia and the US over just how serious a threat to American national security was posed by a spy operation that in many ways appears to be a hangover from the cold war.

While there is little doubt that the core of the operation involved extensive efforts to hide the identities of eight Russian agents who posed as four married couples and sought to become deeply Americanised, even after a surveillance operation lasting a decade, the FBI has been unable to show that the spy ring gathered any intelligence that would count as espionage.

The indictment against a total of 11 people involved in the alleged spy ring accuses them only of money laundering and of failing to register as agents of a foreign government, as is required by law. But the FBI does not accuse them of passing on classified material to Moscow.

Moscow has acknowledged that most of the alleged spies hold Russian citizenship. However, Metsos is a Canadian. As befits all true cloak and dagger tales, there are more questions than answers as to why he ended up in Cyprus.

Blond, balding, middle-aged, the Canadian turned up at the Atrium Zenon apartments, a whitewashed holiday complex on the outskirts of Larnaca, on June 17.

He had booked in, online, for an 11-day stay. But he wasn’t alone. The self-described divorcee had a companion – tall, leggy, much younger – who remained constantly at his side. “She was either Russian or Bulgarian and I’d say she was about 28,” said hotel receptionist Maria Maou.

“He had a Canadian accent but I never heard her speak. I couldn’t tell you if he spoke to her in Russian of English. They just seemed so normal, there was nothing out of the ordinary about them.”

Original article

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