Anna Chapman

Anna Vasilyevna Chapman (А́нна Васи́льевна Ча́пман; born Anna Vasilyevna Kushchenko, 23 February 1982) is a Russian intelligence agent, media personality and model who was arrested in the United States on 27 June 2010 as part of the Illegals Program, a Russian spy ring.

At the time of her arrest, she was accused of espionage on behalf of the Russian Federation's external intelligence agency, the Sluzhba vneshney razvedki (SVR).

She had previously gained British citizenship through marriage, which she used to gain residency in the U.S.

Chapman pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government.

Chapman was born Anna Vasilyevna Kushchenko (А́нна Васи́льевна Кущенко) in Kharkiv on 23 February 1982.

Her father, Vasily Kushchenko, was reportedly a senior KGB official who once served as the Russian ambassador to Kenya, and currently occupies a senior position at the ministry known by its Russian initials MID (foreign affairs).

According to her ex-husband, Anna earned a master's degree in economics with first class honours from Moscow State University.

According to other sources, she got her degree from Peoples' Friendship University of Russia.

Anna Kushchenko met Alex Chapman at a London Docklands rave party in 2001.

They married shortly thereafter in Moscow, and she gained British citizenship, in addition to her native Russian one, and a British passport.

In 2003, or 2004, Anna Chapman moved to London where she worked at NetJets and Barclays.

Anna and Alex Chapman divorced in 2006.

In 2009, Chapman moved to New York, taking up residence at 20 Exchange Place, one block from Wall Street in Manhattan.

Her LinkedIn social networking site profile identified her as CEO of PropertyFinder LLC, a website selling real estate internationally.

Her husband Alex stated that Anna told him the enterprise was continually in debt for the first couple of years.

But suddenly in 2009, she had as many as 50 employees and a successful business.

Chapman was reportedly in a relationship with Michel Bittan, a divorced Israeli-Moroccan restaurant owner, while she was living in New York.

Around this time, she had allegedly attempted to purchase ecstasy tablets.

She later described her time in the United States with the Charles Dickens quote, "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times".

After Anna was arrested in New York on charges of spying, Alex hired media publicist Max Clifford, and sold her story to The Daily Telegraph.

She pleaded guilty to conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government without notifying the U.S. Attorney General.

She and the other Russians were deported to Russia on 8 July 2010, as part of the 2010 Russia–U.S. prisoner swap.

Learning that Chapman had wanted to return to the United Kingdom, the UK government revoked her British citizenship and excluded her from the country.

Since her return to Russia, Chapman has worked in a variety of fields, including for the government as head of a youth council, a catwalk model in Russian fashion shows, and running a television series.

In 2010 she was deported to Russia as part of a prisoner exchange between the United States and Russia.

In late December 2010, Chapman was appointed to the public council of Young Guard of United Russia.

According to the organization, she would "be engaged in educating young people".

Chapman testified that only Poteyev could have provided the U.S. 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 would have known.

On 21 January 2011, Chapman began hosting a weekly TV show in Russia called Secrets of the World for REN TV.

In June 2011, Chapman was appointed as editor of Venture Business News magazine, according to Bloomberg News.

Chapman testified to the closed trial in absentia of Col. Alexander Poteyev, an ex-KGB soldier, which took place in Moscow in May and June 2011.

Chapman wrote a column for Komsomolskaya Pravda. In October 2011, she was accused of plagiarizing material on Alexander Pushkin from a book by Kremlin spin doctor Oleg Matveychev.

The Guardian reported that this incident added to general negative opinions of her in certain sections of Russian society; it said that in September 2011, she had been "heckled during a speech on leadership at 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!"

In 2012, FBI counter-intelligence chief Frank Figliuzzi said that Chapman almost caught a senior member of President Barack Obama's cabinet in a honey trap operation.

Subsequent reporting suggested that these initial reports were inaccurate; officials from the US Department of Justice claimed that the FBI's concern was that another of the alleged spies, Cynthia Murphy, "had been in contact with a fundraiser and 'personal friend' of Hillary Clinton".

Chapman had been sighted in the Armenian breakaway region of Nagorno Karabakh in August 2013.

She arrived with a group of Russian officials to discuss issues with the Republic of Artsakh to resolve their conflict with Azerbaijan over the territory.

She reportedly was also working on her television show, Mysteries of the World. Her visit caused an outcry in Azerbaijan; its foreign ministry declared that Chapman and the other Russian visitors would be classified as personae-non-gratae in Azerbaijan.

In March 2018, it was reported that Alex Chapman had died in May 2015, aged 36, from a drug overdose.