By Waldaniel Amadis | 2023-08-07

SÃO PAULO – The Brazilian government has rejected a US extradition request for an alleged Russian spy who is detained in Brasilia. In a surprising move, Brazilian courts also reduced the spy's prison sentence from 15 years to 5 years, 2 months.

The individual was deported last year from the Netherlands for using fake Brazilian documents to enter.

Brazilian Minister of Justice Flávio Dino announced on his Twitter account on July 27 that the government had decided not to grant the United States' extradition request for alleged Russian spy Sergey Cherkasov.

The Supreme Federal Court (STF) is currently analyzing another extradition request for the same citizen submitted by Russia. Some observers call the request a ploy by Russia to extract an agent who is in trouble.

Russian authorities say he is wanted in Russia for drug trafficking.

Cherkasov already has expressed his desire to serve his sentence in a Russian prison.

"The technical opinion of the Ministry of Justice, regarding two extradition requests, is based on (international) treaties and the law," Dino tweeted.

At the moment Cherkasov "will remain imprisoned in Brazil", said Dino.

The announcement of the Brazilian government's decision coincided with a surprising reduction on July 27 of the penalty.

Cherkasov, a 37-year-old, was sentenced in July 2022 to 15 years in prison in Brazil for identity theft and fraud. He was discovered by Dutch authorities in April 2022 and deported to Brazil to face charges.

A São Paulo court reduced Cherkasov's sentence to five years and two months, making him eligible to serve the rest of his sentence in a semi-open regime in coming days.

Despite the reduction of his sentence, Supreme Court Justice Edson Fachin warned on July 28 that a final decision on the case will not be made until the investigation into espionage in Brazil is complete.

Cherkasov will remain in a special pavilion in the Brasilia prison, which has reassured police investigators who feared he would escape, according to the Metrópoles news site.

The same media outlet said that Brazilian diplomacy is handling the case with "stealth and caution" in order to avoid a crisis between the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and the governments of Washington and Moscow.

Who is the alleged spy?

Using his sham Brazilian identity, Cherkasov earned a master's degree at the Johns Hopkins University campus in Washington, DC, in 2020.

The Russian "sleeper agent" was activated when the Russian invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, say investigators, who add that his mission was to gain access to confidential documents related to Ukraine.

To accomplish this objective, he applied for an unpaid internship at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

"The threat posed by this intelligence officer is deemed potentially very high," the Dutch security agency, the AIVD, said in a statement on June 2022.

Dutch immigration authorities discovered his deception and deported him to Brazil.

Cherkasov engaged in illegal intelligence gathering in the United States, Ireland and Brazil, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) told Brazil in a report. Later, Russia requested his extradition on drug trafficking charges.

"For years, Cherkasov worked as an illegal agent for a Russian intelligence service and committed fraud against the United States," said David Sundberg, assistant director in charge of the FBI's Washington field office, in a March statement.

The Russian case against Cherkasov had been inactive since 2017. Allegedly, Moscow held it as a contingency plan if he was ever arrested, which happened in the Netherlands in 2022.

Complying with diplomatic protocol, Brazil informed the Russian consulate in Sao Paulo about Cherkasov's arrest and extradition from the Netherlands. The consulate confirmed his Russian nationality and identity.

The Russian consulate formally requested that Brazil hand over Cherkasov to Russian security at the embassy, citing his "criminal past."

According to local media outlets, this request caused confusion and surprise in Brazil.

Sleeper agent operations

Cherkasov laid out an elaborate cover story during his years of deception.

In 2010, Cherkasov arrived in Brazil, claiming to have been born there in 1989 and to have grown up in Argentina. Investigators found that he was born in 1985 in Russia.

"He always presented himself as a Brazilian raised in Argentina and took forró classes -- a typical dance from Brazil -- with a Brazilian girlfriend," a representative from a dance school in Sao Paulo confirmed to The Edge. Authorities are withholding the girlfriend's identity.

His dance teacher, Pheliphe Britto, described him as a "normal person, a bit shy but joyful and at the same time reserved. We never thought he was a Russian spy."

The FBI documents provided to Brazilian authorities revealed that Cherkasov's birthplace is Kaliningrad, where his mother still resides. It is also indicated that Cherkasov may have served in the Russian army as a young man.

Meanwhile, Brazilian law enforcement confiscated a cellphone belonging to Cherkasov from his residence in Cotia, a municipality in the outskirts of São Paulo, which it handed over to the FBI.

Other cases of 'sleeper agents'

The utilization of Brazilian identities by suspected Russian spies is a trend that extends beyond Cherkasov.

In October, Norwegian authorities apprehended military officer Mikhail Mikushin, who assumed the "name José Assis Giammaria" to work as a researcher at the University of Tromso. However, it remains unclear if he actually lived in Brazil.

Another instance of a Russian spy presenting himself as a Brazilian, using the name "Gerhard Daniel Campos Wittich", has recently come to light. In January he stopped messaging his Brazilian girlfriend while traveling in Malaysia, causing her to notify authorities.

Campos Wittich was actually a Russian agent with the last name Shmyrev, Greek intelligence said in March. Both he and his real-life wife, a suspected spy who had been living in Greece with a dead Greek infant's identity, are likely back in Russia.

In Argentina, authorities are looking for a Russian national who called himself Alexander Verner and had worked as a translator for a government agency. He last entered the South American country on March 27 on a Turkish Airlines flight from Istanbul. Since then his whereabouts are unknown.

It was later revealed that he had been activated as a sleeper agent and tasked with gathering information on Argentine military capabilities.