@bradleyjane.bsky.social
UK Investigative Correspondent for The New York Times. Not from New York City from (near) Rotherham. I don't know if I have the energy for another social media platform.
An FBI special agent had sex with prostitutes during overseas assignments and domestic travels and used an agency-issued device to pay for the encounters, the Justice Department’s watchdog said, committing policy violations that agency officials have said could expose agents to extortion.
01.07.2025 22:03 — 👍 5489 🔁 1808 💬 747 📌 185
ICYMI Our investigation into how Russia used Brazil as a spy factory is in today’s weekend paper (shout out to our talented print design team) www.nytimes.com/2025/05/21/w...
25.05.2025 07:23 — 👍 3 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0Until the counterintelligence team at the Brazilian Federal Police hunted them down.
Many had already left Brazil by the time the agents found them. So they turned to Interpol to circulate their names and photos worldwide -- all but guaranteeing they will never work abroad again.
Big Russian spy operations have been disrupted before. This one was different.
They weren’t there to spy on Brazil. They were there to bolster their cover stories — spending years becoming Brazilian before heading off to spy elsewhere.
Brazil's Federal Police were able to identify him, and the other spies, through a Russian tradecraft flaw.
The spies had genuine Brazilian birth certificates, but were "ghosts" in the system with no record of being in Brazil until they suddenly appeared as adults & rapidly collected ID docs.
We got hold of text messages between Shymrev and his Russian wife, another intelligence officer, that offer a glimpse at the personal and often frustrating life deep undercover. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/21/w...
21.05.2025 09:54 — 👍 2 🔁 3 💬 1 📌 0
One of the most interesting spies is Gerhard Daniel Campos Wittich -- whose real name we learnt is Artem Shymrev.
He spent 8 years in Rio building up a bonafide business and a cover identity so convincing it had fooled his Brazilian girlfriend, colleagues and friends.
The new spies include a married couple, Roman Olegovich Koval and Irina Alekseyevna Antonova, along with Olga Igorevna Tyutereva and Aleksandr Andreyevich Utekhin.
Then there's Vladimir Aleksandrovich Danilov and Yekaterina Leonidovna Danilova, a second married couple.
We reveal the identities of six Russian spies who have never been publicly named before –– and we have new details on three others.
All nine intelligence officers had managed to obtain authentic Brazilian birth certificates under their cover identities.
Our investigation is based on hundreds of investigative documents and interviews with dozens of police and intelligence officials across three continents –– alongside Brazilians who knew some of the spies personally.
Thread with some of our key findings:
The Spy Factory: How Russia’s intelligence services turned Brazil into an assembly line for its deep-cover operatives –– until an elite team of Brazilian cops hunted them down.
New investigation with Michael Schwirtz. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/21/w...
Big investigation incoming…
20.05.2025 14:49 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Fascinating story by my colleague @bradleyjane.bsky.social, on how H.R. Smith Group, a donor to Nigel Farage's Reform UK party, sold sensitive technology to a major supplier of Russia's blacklisted state weapons agency: www.nytimes.com/2025/03/28/w...
28.03.2025 10:25 — 👍 80 🔁 39 💬 1 📌 1
