An investigation has revealed identities of suspected Russian agents who have been trying to obtain alternative citizenship, with an intention to exercise fraudulent practices. The investigation has further revealed that, Christina, Vasily Istomin, Maxim Petrovich Zharkhov are already facing probe in Europe. In an attempt to evade it, the suspected Russian agents are trying to opt this way.
Notably, these people have already faced denial of citizenship repeatedly after being flagged for their suspicious background activities. The suspicious Russian agents first tried to enter European region to apply for a citizenship. The reports highlight that, their suspicious character raised concerns of the European authorities cancelling their applications, in order to protect the security of the region.
Whereas, the applications were rejected after strict due diligence checks revealed about their past activities and irregular financial records. This also links with the EU policy: in 2022, the European Union Commission asked its member states to revoke ‘golden passports’ issued to Russian and Belarusian citizens, who are directly or indirectly linked to Kremlin.
Sources also revealed that these agents also tried to apply for Maltese citizenship, but got rejected. It is to be noted hereby that, Malta, which is part of European Union, paves visa-free access to 180 countries, is one of the popular destinations. In fact, Malta has also closed the doors for Russian and Belarus nationals following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Moreover, sources associated with this case have made revelations that these agents are trying to use second citizenship as a pathway to access global reach, which is currently a hard task for majority of Russian nationals. Considering all this, Europol and Interpol have increased the surveillance over these kind of suspicious cases, where significant amount of evidence against them are likely to unfold in the coming weeks.
This also forces the nations running CBI programme to keep a close look on such kind of applications, in order to keep the integrity of the programme high, as well as to make sure only applicants with clean and reputable background are allowed.
