A suspect in the Russia spy saga cracked after his arrest, confessing that he was a Russian agent and saying he had greater loyalty to the Kremlin than to his own son, US prosecutors said.
The suspect, who operated under the false identity of Juan Lazaro, also said that his Peruvian-born journalist wife, Vicky Pelaez, made several trips to South America to give intelligence to their Russian spymasters.
The couple are among 11 “deep-cover” suspects charged with trying to infiltrate US policymaking circles in a Cold War-style spy case that has threatened to upset efforts to “reset” ties between Washington and Moscow.
Nine of the 11 suspects faced bail hearings on Thursday in three separate courts, though the five awaiting their fate in Boston and Virginia will have to return as proceedings were adjourned to consider further evidence.
US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara outlined Lazaro’s remarkable confession in a letter to Judge Ronald Ellis, imploring him not to make the same mistake as a local court in Cyprus, which freed a key conspirator on bail who later fled.
In what was described as a “lengthy post-arrest statement” after waiving his Miranda rights, Lazaro confessed that he was not Uruguayan and that “Juan Lazaro” was not his real name, though he never revealed his true identity.
He also told investigators that “although he loved his son, he would not violate his loyalty to the ‘Service’ even for his son,” according to the letter. The “Service” is short for Russia’s foreign intelligence service SVR, the successor to the Soviet-era KGB.
Judge Ellis said he would decide on Lazaro at a later date, but said that Pelaez, his wife, could be released under house arrest on a US$250,000 bond.
“Vicky’s case is more complicated. She does not appear to be a trained agent. She has a real identity and she is a US citizen and she has an incentive to stay in the country,” the judge said.
Ellis denied bail to another couple, Richard and Cynthia Murphy, accused of secretly garnering high-level contacts since the mid-1990s while posing as a suburban New Jersey couple.
Bharara’s letter also revealed that the FBI has decrypted about 90 messages they have not made public and that a raid on a safe-deposit box yielded “eight unmarked envelopes — each of which contained US$10,000, in apparently US$100 bills.”
Ellis turned down a bail request from a 10th suspect arrested in last Sunday’s swoop, flame-haired Russian Anna Chapman, on Monday.
The suspect’s British ex-husband, Alex Chapman, told Britain’s Daily Telegraph yesterday that he met his wife-to-be, then called Anna Kushchenko, at a London party in 2001.
Alex Chapman said when their marriage broke down in 2005, he feared she was being “conditioned” to become a spy.
The 11th suspect is Christopher Metsos, the alleged Kremlin moneyman. Metsos was arrested in Cyprus but vanished after he posted a 26,500 euro (US$32,330) bond and surrendered his passport.
Authorities feared Metsos might cross into the breakaway northern part of the Mediterranean island, which has no international extradition treaties and is a well-known haven for fugitives.
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