FSB penetrates TLScontact

The Insider and Bellingcat Reveal How Anatoly Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin Obtained UK Visas Without Checks

The Insider and Bellingcat have published a new investigation into the poisoning of former GRU officer Sergei Skripal in Salisbury. It tells how the Russian secret services were able to obtain visas for Anatoly Chepiga (Boshirov) and Alexander Mishkin (Petrov), who are said to be the perpetrators of the assassination .

The Insider and Bellingcat note that every Russian who applies for a British visa undergoes a two-stage check: first, the documents are examined by employees of the authorized TLScontact visa center, then this is done by the UK Home Office. Even for a regular tourist visa, it is desirable to confirm the existence of ties with your country, as well as financial solvency. For those applying for a business visa, proof of business ties or employment is also required. However, Chepiga and Mishkin did not have any business ties with Britain, nor a business registered under these names in the Russian Federation, and still received British and Schengen visas.

Investigators obtained a number of documents handed over by Vadim Mitrofanov (not his real name), a former employee of the TLScontact visa center, who applied for asylum in the United States after the FSB began to force him to cooperate, putting pressure on his pregnant wife and his mother. According to the testimonies, the Russian special services tried to arrange their employee in TLS, they had access to the cameras of the visa center and a diagram of the internal computer network. In the spring of 2016, the FSB officer, in an interview with Mitrofanov, mentioned that they wanted to send a couple of people to the UK.

After Vadim Mitrofanov took his family to the United States and then left on his own, he turned this information to the FBI and MI5. However, no one cooperated with him.