A Russian chef has been arrested over alleged plots with a foreign power to stage “large scale” acts of “destabilization” during the Olympic Games in Paris.
The 40-year-old man, who has lived in France for 14 years, was arrested during a raid of his apartment in central Paris on Sunday. It’s reported that a document was found linked to an elite Russian special forces unit operating under the command of the FSB, a security agency heir to the KGB.
A search on the unnamed man’s property was made by officers from the elite ‘research and intervention brigade' (BRI), and was called in by the General Directorate of Internal Security. The raid on his home in Rue-Saint-Denis, on the brink of the Seine, is said to have found “documents of diplomatic interest”.
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Following the arrest, a judicial investigation has been opened into allegations of sharing “intelligence with a foreign power with a view to provoking hostilities in France,” a crime that is punishable by 30 years imprisonment.
The alleged plot is not believed to have been terror-related but could have had “serious” consequences during the Games. The suspect was indicted on his charge on the same day and placed in a pretrial detention.
According to French outlet Le Monde , an investigation into the man’s activities began in May after an alleged phone conversation with Russian intelligence services was overheard in a restaurant. He is claimed to have said: “The French are going to have an opening ceremony like there has never been before.”
No details have been provided regarding the alleged conspiracy to impact the games. The report said the unnamed man had been trained as a chef in Paris and he had previously participated in Russian reality and cooking shows.
He’s said to have first arrived in France in 2010 and spent time in the ski resort Courchevel, which has been popular with the Russian elite. He worked there in a Michelin-star restaurant before moving to Paris in 2012.
The report claimed to have seen emails dating back to September 2012, when the suspect had told his landlady he was returning to Moscow to work as an official in the Russian government. However, he took part in a civic training day, a mandatory integration step in France, in April 2013.
France’s intelligence service had tracked him for months and picked up on his alleged phone call to his handler in May. The suspect was said to be returning from a trip to Istanbul to his home in Paris at the time but missed the flight due to excessive alcohol consumption and made an alternate flight to Bulgaria, where the opening ceremony conversation is claimed to have been monitored.
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