Police officials said the three-year probe, code-named “Operation East,” has so far unmasked at least nine Russian intelligence officers who obtained Brazilian passports and other documents that would allow them to operate abroad posing as Latin Americans, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.
Two of the officers were arrested; the remainder were forced to return to Russia after their covers were blown, Brazilian investigators said, according to The New York Times.
The newspaper said the investigation began in 2022 when US intelligence warned Brazil that a man travelling on a Brazilian passport—identified later as Sergei Cherkasov, working under the alias Victor Muller Ferreira—was in fact a Russian operative heading to The Hague to intern at the International Criminal Court just as the court launched inquiries into alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine.
Dutch authorities turned him back at Schiphol Airport; he was subsequently jailed in Brazil for document fraud.
Detectives found Cherkasov’s birth certificate listed a mother who, though real, never had children.
Under Brazilian law, births in remote areas can be registered on the word of two witnesses rather than hospital records, a loophole police say Russian handlers exploited.
Using similar methods, other operatives quietly established “deep cover” backstories while living unobtrusively in Brazil before being dispatched to target countries, the report said.
Their Brazilian passports, voting cards and even proof of mandatory military service were genuine, making detection difficult.
To hamper any future travel, Brazilian authorities issued Interpol “blue notices” seeking information on the suspects, a move analysts say effectively ends their usefulness to Moscow overseas, The New York Times reported.
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Source: PAP, The New York Times