Anna Chapman
Encyclopedia
Anna Vasil’yevna Chapman is a Russia
n national, who was living in New York
, United States
when she was arrested along with nine others on 27 June 2010, on suspicion of working for the Illegals Program
spy ring under the Russian Federation's external intelligence agency, the SVR (Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki). Chapman pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy
to act as an agent of a foreign government without notifying the U.S. Attorney General, and was deported back to Russia on 8 July 2010, as part of a prisoner swap.
, according to U.S. authorities, and her father was employed in the Soviet embassy in Nairobi
, Kenya
. According to Chapman's British ex-husband, her father, Vasily Kushchenko, was also a senior KGB
official, although this is unsubstantiated. According to her husband, Anna Chapman Kushchyenko earned a Masters degrees in economics with first class honours from Moscow University. According to other sources she got her degree from Peoples' Friendship University of Russia
.
, Barclays Bank and allegedly at a few other companies for brief periods.
She met Alex Chapman at a London Docklands rave party in 2001 and they married shortly thereafter in Moscow; as a result she gained dual Russian-British citizenship, and a British passport. After Anna was arrested in New York, Alex engaged media publicist Max Clifford
, and sold his story to The Daily Telegraph
newspaper.
in Manhattan. Her LinkedIn
social networking site profile identified her as CEO of PropertyFinder LLC, a website selling real estate internationally. Alex has stated that Anna told him the enterprise was continually in the red for the first couple of years, and then suddenly in 2009, she had as many as 50 employees and a successful business.
She is reported to have been dating Michel Bittan, a prominent New York restaurant owner. She later described her time in the US with the Charles Dickens
quote, "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times".
On 21 January 2011, Chapman began hosting a weekly TV show in Russia called Secrets of the World for REN TV.
In June 2011, Anna became editor of Venture Business News magazine, according to Bloomberg News.
She testified to the closed trial in absentia
of Col. Alexander Poteyev that took place in Moscow in May and June 2011. Chapman testified that it was only Poteyev who could have provided the US authorities with the information that led to her arrest in 2010; she also alleged that she was arrested shortly after an undercover U.S. agent contacted her using a code that only Poteyev and her personal handler could know.
Chapman writes a column for Komsomolskaya Pravda
. In October 2011 she was accused of plagiarising
material on Alexander Pushkin from a book by Kremlin spin-doctor Oleg Matveychev
. The Guardian newspaper reported that this incident added to a general negative trend towards her in certain sections of Russian society, saying that in September 2011, she had been "heckled during a speech on leadership at a St Petersburg University." Students had, it said, displayed signs stating: "Chapman, get out of the university!" and "The Kremlin and the porn studio are in the other direction!"
coffee shop
. The FBI agent offered Chapman a fake passport at Starbucks
, with the instructions to forward it to another spy. He asked, "are you ready for this step?", to which Chapman unequivocally replied, "Of course." She accepted the passport. However, after making a series of phone calls to her father, Vasily Kushchenko, in Moscow, Chapman ended up heeding her father's advice and handed the passport in at a local police station, but was arrested shortly after.
, where the swap occurred on the morning of 8 July. The Russian jet returned to Moscow's Domodedovo airport, where after landing the 10 spies were kept away from local and international press.
exercised the special powers by the British Home Secretary
to deprive Chapman of her British citizenship, only used against six people since their introduction in 2002, in part to make it easier to deport radical Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al Masri. The Home Office issued legal papers revoking her citizenship on 13 July 2010. Steps are also being taken to exclude Chapman, meaning she could not travel to the UK. After her deportation to Russia, Baum reiterated that his client had wished to stay in the UK; he also said that she was "particularly upset" by the revocation of her UK citizenship and exclusion from the country.
Magazines and blogs detailed her fashion style and dress sense, while tabloids displayed her action figure dolls. Chapman was described by local media in New York as a regular of exclusive bars and restaurants. US Vice-President Joe Biden
, when jokingly asked by Jay Leno
on NBC
's The Tonight Show with Jay Leno
, "Do we have any spies that hot?", replied in a mock serious tone, "Let me be clear. It was not my idea to send her back."
In October 2010, Chapman posed on the cover of Russian version of Maxim
magazine in Agent Provocateur
lingerie. The magazine also included Chapman in its list of Russia's 100 sexiest women.
According to the news agency Interfax, effective 1 October 2010 Chapman is employed as an adviser on investment and innovation issues to the President of FundserviceBank, a Moscow bank that handles payments on behalf of state- and private-sector enterprises in the Russian aerospace industry.
In April 2011, Chapman was on the runway as a catwalk model for Moscow Fashion Week
at the Shiyan & Rudkovskaya show.
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n national, who was living in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
when she was arrested along with nine others on 27 June 2010, on suspicion of working for the Illegals Program
Illegals Program
The Illegals Program, as it was called by the United States Department of Justice, was a network of Russian sleeper agents under non-official cover whose investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation culminated in the arrest of ten agents and a prisoner swap between Russia and the United...
spy ring under the Russian Federation's external intelligence agency, the SVR (Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki). Chapman pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy
Conspiracy (crime)
In the criminal law, a conspiracy is an agreement between two or more persons to break the law at some time in the future, and, in some cases, with at least one overt act in furtherance of that agreement...
to act as an agent of a foreign government without notifying the U.S. Attorney General, and was deported back to Russia on 8 July 2010, as part of a prisoner swap.
Biography
Chapman was born Anna Vasil’yevna Kushchyenko in VolgogradVolgograd
Volgograd , formerly called Tsaritsyn and Stalingrad is an important industrial city and the administrative center of Volgograd Oblast, Russia. It is long, north to south, situated on the western bank of the Volga River...
, according to U.S. authorities, and her father was employed in the Soviet embassy in Nairobi
Nairobi
Nairobi is the capital and largest city of Kenya. The city and its surrounding area also forms the Nairobi County. The name "Nairobi" comes from the Maasai phrase Enkare Nyirobi, which translates to "the place of cool waters". However, it is popularly known as the "Green City in the Sun" and is...
, Kenya
Kenya
Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...
. According to Chapman's British ex-husband, her father, Vasily Kushchenko, was also a senior KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
official, although this is unsubstantiated. According to her husband, Anna Chapman Kushchyenko earned a Masters degrees in economics with first class honours from Moscow University. According to other sources she got her degree from Peoples' Friendship University of Russia
Peoples' Friendship University of Russia
The Peoples' Friendship University of Russia is an educational and research institution located in the South of Moscow and is ranked by the Ministry of Education of Russia as the country's third-best university after Moscow State University and Saint Petersburg State University...
.
London: 2001–2006
Chapman moved to London in 2003 or 2004, working at NetJetsNetJets
NetJets, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, offers fractional ownership and rental of private business jets.-History:NetJets Inc., formerly Executive Jet Aviation, was founded in 1964 as one of the first private business jet charter and aircraft management companies...
, Barclays Bank and allegedly at a few other companies for brief periods.
She met Alex Chapman at a London Docklands rave party in 2001 and they married shortly thereafter in Moscow; as a result she gained dual Russian-British citizenship, and a British passport. After Anna was arrested in New York, Alex engaged media publicist Max Clifford
Max Clifford
Maxwell Frank Clifford is an English publicist, considered the highest-profile and best-known publicist in the United Kingdom...
, and sold his story to The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
newspaper.
New York: 2009–2010
She took up residence at 20 Exchange Place, one block from Wall StreetWall Street
Wall Street refers to the financial district of New York City, named after and centered on the eight-block-long street running from Broadway to South Street on the East River in Lower Manhattan. Over time, the term has become a metonym for the financial markets of the United States as a whole, or...
in Manhattan. Her LinkedIn
LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a business-related social networking site. Founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking. , LinkedIn reports more than 120 million registered users in more than 200 countries and territories. The site is available in English, French,...
social networking site profile identified her as CEO of PropertyFinder LLC, a website selling real estate internationally. Alex has stated that Anna told him the enterprise was continually in the red for the first couple of years, and then suddenly in 2009, she had as many as 50 employees and a successful business.
She is reported to have been dating Michel Bittan, a prominent New York restaurant owner. She later described her time in the US with the Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
quote, "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times".
Russia: 2010–present
In late December 2010 Chapman was appointed to the public council of Young Guard of United Russia. According to the organization she "will be engaged in educating young people".On 21 January 2011, Chapman began hosting a weekly TV show in Russia called Secrets of the World for REN TV.
In June 2011, Anna became editor of Venture Business News magazine, according to Bloomberg News.
She testified to the closed trial in absentia
In absentia
In absentia is Latin for "in the absence". In legal use, it usually means a trial at which the defendant is not physically present. The phrase is not ordinarily a mere observation, but suggests recognition of violation to a defendant's right to be present in court proceedings in a criminal trial.In...
of Col. Alexander Poteyev that took place in Moscow in May and June 2011. Chapman testified that it was only Poteyev who could have provided the US authorities with the information that led to her arrest in 2010; she also alleged that she was arrested shortly after an undercover U.S. agent contacted her using a code that only Poteyev and her personal handler could know.
Chapman writes a column for Komsomolskaya Pravda
Komsomolskaya Pravda
Komsomolskaya Pravda is a daily Russian tabloid newspaper, founded on March 13th, 1925. It is published by "Izdatelsky Dom Komsomolskaya Pravda" .- History :...
. In October 2011 she was accused of plagiarising
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is defined in dictionaries as the "wrongful appropriation," "close imitation," or "purloining and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions," and the representation of them as one's own original work, but the notion remains problematic with nebulous...
material on Alexander Pushkin from a book by Kremlin spin-doctor Oleg Matveychev
Oleg Matveychev
Oleg Anatol'evich Matveychev is a Russian politician and spin doctor for the Kremlin. He is currently deputy governor of the Volgograd Oblast.-Career:...
. The Guardian newspaper reported that this incident added to a general negative trend towards her in certain sections of Russian society, saying that in September 2011, she had been "heckled during a speech on leadership at a St Petersburg University." Students had, it said, displayed signs stating: "Chapman, get out of the university!" and "The Kremlin and the porn studio are in the other direction!"
Illegals Program and arrest
Chapman is one of only two of the Illegals Program Russians arrested in June 2010 who did not use an assumed name.Arrest
Officials claimed Chapman worked with a network of others, until an undercover FBI agent attempted to draw her into a trap at a ManhattanManhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
coffee shop
Coffeehouse
A coffeehouse or coffee shop is an establishment which primarily serves prepared coffee or other hot beverages. It shares some of the characteristics of a bar, and some of the characteristics of a restaurant, but it is different from a cafeteria. As the name suggests, coffeehouses focus on...
. The FBI agent offered Chapman a fake passport at Starbucks
Starbucks
Starbucks Corporation is an international coffee and coffeehouse chain based in Seattle, Washington. Starbucks is the largest coffeehouse company in the world, with 17,009 stores in 55 countries, including over 11,000 in the United States, over 1,000 in Canada, over 700 in the United Kingdom, and...
, with the instructions to forward it to another spy. He asked, "are you ready for this step?", to which Chapman unequivocally replied, "Of course." She accepted the passport. However, after making a series of phone calls to her father, Vasily Kushchenko, in Moscow, Chapman ended up heeding her father's advice and handed the passport in at a local police station, but was arrested shortly after.
International exchange
After being formally charged, Chapman and nine other detainees became part of a spy swap deal between the US and Russia, the biggest of its kind since 1986. The 10 Russian agents returned to Russia via a chartered jet that landed at Vienna International AirportVienna International Airport
Vienna International Airport , located in Schwechat and southeast of central Vienna, is the busiest and biggest airport in Austria. It is often referred to as Schwechat, the name of the county it is in. The airport is capable of handling wide-body aircraft such as the Boeing 747 and Airbus A340...
, where the swap occurred on the morning of 8 July. The Russian jet returned to Moscow's Domodedovo airport, where after landing the 10 spies were kept away from local and international press.
Revocation of UK citizenship
According to a statement from her US lawyer Robert Baum and media reports, Chapman wished to move to the UK. As a result, the Home OfficeHome Office
The Home Office is the United Kingdom government department responsible for immigration control, security, and order. As such it is responsible for the police, UK Border Agency, and the Security Service . It is also in charge of government policy on security-related issues such as drugs,...
exercised the special powers by the British Home Secretary
Home Secretary
The Secretary of State for the Home Department, commonly known as the Home Secretary, is the minister in charge of the Home Office of the United Kingdom, and one of the country's four Great Offices of State...
to deprive Chapman of her British citizenship, only used against six people since their introduction in 2002, in part to make it easier to deport radical Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al Masri. The Home Office issued legal papers revoking her citizenship on 13 July 2010. Steps are also being taken to exclude Chapman, meaning she could not travel to the UK. After her deportation to Russia, Baum reiterated that his client had wished to stay in the UK; he also said that she was "particularly upset" by the revocation of her UK citizenship and exclusion from the country.
Media coverage and popular reaction
After her arrest by the FBI for her involvement with the Illegals Program, Chapman gained celebrity status. Photos of Chapman taken from her Facebook profile appeared on the web, and several videos of her were uploaded to YouTube.Magazines and blogs detailed her fashion style and dress sense, while tabloids displayed her action figure dolls. Chapman was described by local media in New York as a regular of exclusive bars and restaurants. US Vice-President Joe Biden
Joe Biden
Joseph Robinette "Joe" Biden, Jr. is the 47th and current Vice President of the United States, serving under President Barack Obama...
, when jokingly asked by Jay Leno
Jay Leno
James Douglas Muir "Jay" Leno is an American stand-up comedian and television host.From 1992 to 2009, Leno was the host of NBC's The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Beginning in September 2009, Leno started a primetime talk show, titled The Jay Leno Show, which aired weeknights at 10:00 p.m. ,...
on NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
's The Tonight Show with Jay Leno
The Tonight Show with Jay Leno
The Tonight Show with Jay Leno is an American late-night talk show hosted by Jay Leno that initially aired from May 25, 1992 to May 29, 2009, and resumed production on March 1, 2010. The fourth incarnation of the Tonight Show franchise made its debut on May 25, 1992, three days following Johnny...
, "Do we have any spies that hot?", replied in a mock serious tone, "Let me be clear. It was not my idea to send her back."
In October 2010, Chapman posed on the cover of Russian version of Maxim
Maxim (magazine)
Maxim is an international men's magazine based in the United Kingdom and known for its pictorials featuring popular actresses, singers, and female models, sometimes pictured dressed, often pictured scantily dressed but not fully nude....
magazine in Agent Provocateur
Agent Provocateur (lingerie)
Agent Provocateur is a British lingerie retailer founded in 1994 by Joseph Corré and Serena Rees. The first shop was opened on London's Broadwick Street in the Soho district in 1994. Since then, the company has opened 30 stores in 13 countries across the globe. In 2007, Agent Provocateur was...
lingerie. The magazine also included Chapman in its list of Russia's 100 sexiest women.
According to the news agency Interfax, effective 1 October 2010 Chapman is employed as an adviser on investment and innovation issues to the President of FundserviceBank, a Moscow bank that handles payments on behalf of state- and private-sector enterprises in the Russian aerospace industry.
In April 2011, Chapman was on the runway as a catwalk model for Moscow Fashion Week
Fashion Week
A fashion week is a fashion industry event, lasting approximately one week, which allows fashion designers, brands or "houses" to display their latest collections in runway shows and buyers and the media to take a look at the latest trends. Most importantly, these events let the industry know...
at the Shiyan & Rudkovskaya show.
External links
- Plea agreement, United States v. Anna Chapman, no. 10 Cr. 598, (S.D.N.Y 8 July 2010)
- US vs Anna Chapman Complaint
- Anna Chapman video and Russian news