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| Tuesday, 25 May 2004 |
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Spies like us: KGB vets find way in Russia's capitalist world MOSCOW, (AFP) As Dutch aid worker Arjan Erkel faced the media after his release from 20 months of captivity in Russia's Caucasus, an inconspicuous man stood smiling at his side. Gray-haired and plump, sporting an argyle sweater, Valentin Velichko did not look the part of a former KGB agent who spent months securing the release of the kidnapped aid worker from Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders - MSF). The 55-year-old Velichko heads an association of retired foreign intelligence agents whom the Erkel affair has thrust into the place they've avoided for most of their professional lives - the spotlight. The association is a loose grouping of veterans of Russia's SVR foreign intelligence service which in Soviet times was under the KGB - former spies steering through Russia's post-Soviet capitalist world. Hostage recovery has not up till now figured in their line of work. "This is not our normal line of business," Velichko told AFP at the group's office on the outskirts of Moscow. When the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, the spies who came in from the cold faced the same problems as everyone else - finding a niche in the wild capitalism that replaced the planned totalitarian system. "At first we did mostly security," Velichko said. "Then we finally realized that we should do what we were taught... collecting information and analyzing it." Today they have dozens of clients and concentrate mainly on consulting services - "gathering information and ensuring economic, financial and personal safety of individuals and businesses" - like GAZ auto works, which manufacture Russia's ubiquitous Volga sedan and was in shambles after the Soviet breakup. "We gathered information on their debtors, provided help in retrieving the funds to the factory," Velichko said. "We checked their potential partners for reliability, we recommended financial and accounting schemes under which the factory could work." "For the majority of director's posts in the dealers network, we recommended our past colleagues (from the) KGB, intelligence counter-intelligence." To the veterans, their job description today has not changed that much since their spying days - they still serve their government by fighting bad guys. If before the bad guys were abroad, today they pose dangers from within the country, be they "bandits" or shady businessmen. "Right now support of consciencious businesses is the goal of the government... We are earning money on this but we are also providing a service to conscientious businesses and businessmen." The work also offers some of the adrenaline to which the men had become accustomed during their spying days. When Velichko first retired from SVR in 1993, "I was always tired, felt like something was missing. But as soon as a dangerous situation presented itself with bandits - shootouts, settling of accounts - I felt better." The Erkel case offered adrenaline and more - a mystery to tax their problem-solving skills. The chief of MSF's mission in Dagestan, a republic bordering war-torn Chechnya, was kidnapped in August 2002. After 11 months of investigation by Russia's law enforcement agencies failed to turn up any clues, MSF approached the veterans through an intermediary. Velichko headed a four-man team who worked on the case full-time for nine months. Using their extensive web of contacts, the veterans eventually traced Erkel's abductors and conducted delicate negotiations that led to his release on April 11. In the months prior, MSF had increased its criticism of Russia's law enforcement agencies over the case, suggesting that local and federal officials may have been involved in the abduction. The veterans deflect such criticism of their security services brethren. "There are lines that government agencies can't cross, but private agencies can... like talking to bandits," Velichko said. The veterans do not plan to enter the hostage recovery business fulltime - they say they earned only a small sum in addition to the coverage of all expenses and "we have plenty of other things to keep us busy." But Velichko admits that he enjoyed working on the case - "a visit of the good old days with a happy ending." |
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