EVIDENCE AGAINST SUSPECTED RUSSIAN SPY REJECTED
MI5 THE WRONG GREAT GAME? KATIA ZATULIVETER
Counter-intelligence officials at MI5 are bitterly disappointed that a specially convened panel of judges (Special Immigration and Appeals Commission - SIAC) has allowed Katia Zatuliveter, a former Parliamentary secretary and suspected SVR agent to stay in the UK. Three senior tribunal officials dismissed much of the evidence presented by the Security Service, but not all...
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ussian-born Zatuliveter, 26, had relationships with several prominent officials, including British politician and defence select committee member Mike Hancock, 65, a senior Dutch diplomat in his mid-thirties, a German military official within NATO aged 56, and an official operating under the auspices of the United Nations. These liaisons were sufficient to alert MI5, and the tribunal acknowledge they provided “ample grounds for suspicion.” However, though the researcher may have been “calculating and ambitious,” she was not a spy, accordSir Stephen Lander ing to the
three member panel, which included former MI5 Director-General Sir Stephen Lander. Senior MI5 counter-intelligence officials believed Zatuliveter had been tasked with targeting important officials in government, military offices and business. This amidst a secret espionage war being fought against SVR operatives in London. Two officers were assigned to the Zatuliveter case, though they were but part of a wider investigation which has been engaged in identifying SVR contacts mainly in London: some of these amongst a growing London-based Russian population of over 30,000. And Eye Spy understands much emphasis by the recently enlarged MI5 counter-intelligence desk has focused on known SVR targets or “persons of interest.” Few agencies are more experienced in the “subtle methods of recruitment” than the SVR, which is known to have intensified its spying operations in Britain. All of this led MI5 to believe Zatuliveter was either an agent, or that she had been unwittingly targeted and selected by the SVR as a contact woman. Zatuliveter herself was probably oblivious to such attention, but an encounter with a
An MI5 team held several interviews with Zatuliveter in various hotels diplomat from the Russian Embassy prompted her to notify her employer - Mike Hancock. Perhaps an indication she was concerned. Either way, it is now known the man was in the service of the SVR. Few intelligence watchers do not believe it was Zatuliveter’s previous relations that seem to have attracted the attention of the Russian agency, as well as a watching MI5. All of these circumstances were examined by SIAC, plus Zatuliveter’s apparent naivety. So
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