Sergey Skripal's niece in Russia denies making some big admissions in an interview with the BBC that she says never happened

Strange things are afoot with Victoria Skripal, the niece of Sergey Skripal, the former double agent poisoned and nearly killed in England earlier this year. On July 10, the BBC’s Russian-language service published an interview with Victoria, where she produced a copy of an exclusive contract with the Russian state television network Pervyi Kanal.

Victoria told the BBC that she’d been hired to work as an economist for the production company “Direkt,” with a monthly salary of 115,000 rubles ($1,840), without doing any actual work, except for appearing on Pervyi Kanal’s talk shows. The BBC captured all these admissions on tape. A source close to Skripal also told the BBC that she also received a one-time payment of 1 million rubles ($16,000).

Hours after the interview was published, however, Skripal told the magazine RBC that she never spoke to any journalists from the BBC. She says she works for Direkt, but insists that she actually performs the economist duties laid out in her contract, pointing out that she listed her monthly salary on her application for a British visa. Officials in the UK have already denied Skripal a visa twice: first for being unemployed, and then for earning too little income. She reportedly plans to file a third application.

• In early July, the political party “Just Russia” nominated Victoria Skripal for a seat in the Yaroslavl regional parliament, which will hold elections on September 9.