KYIV. UkraineGate . 29 . November . 2022 | Ukraine News.
According to an investigation by Bellingcat and The Insider , Serhiy Cherkasov, an employee of the Main Investigative Directorate of the Russian Federation (GRU), who tried to get a job at the International Court of Justice in The Hague under the guise of a Brazilian citizen, was detained for forging documents. Russia fabricated a drug-trafficking case against him in order to extradite the criminal, according to investigators .
Details
Investigators report that on April 1, 2022, Cherkasov flew from the United States to the Netherlands with the documents of a “citizen of Brazil” named Victor Muller Ferreira, where he was supposed to undergo an internship at the International Criminal Court. In his resume, there was information about his education as a political scientist at Dublin’s Trinity College, and then at the American School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University. During his internship at the International Space Station, he was supposed to study how war crimes are investigated, particularly in Ukraine and Syria.
However, border guards detained Ferreira at the airport and sent him to Brazil, informing the local authorities that they believe him to be GRU employee Serhii Volodymyrovych Cherkasov, who was born on September 11, 1985. When he was met by law enforcement officers at the Brazilian airport, he, according to witnesses, tried to be indignant and convince that he was the same Brazilian. It looked silly because of his strong accent, easily noticeable by ear for any native speaker, writes The Insider. It was later revealed that his late “Brazilian mother” never had children.
Cherkasov was sentenced to 15 years in prison for using forged documents. In July 2022, Russia sent a request to Brazil asking for the extradition of a Russian, in which it admitted that the arrested person was indeed Sergey Cherkasov. However, the Prosecutor’s Office of the Russian Federation called him a criminal who is allegedly wanted by the Russian Federation for heroin smuggling.
“In support of this, Russia provided Brazil with dozens of pages of incriminating documents and written forensic medical examination testimony. They claimed that Serhii Cherkasov was a member of a criminal group that, between 2011 and 2013, transported drugs from Afghanistan through Tajikistan and sold them through drug trafficking groups in Russia,” the investigators noted.
As Bellingcat writes, the name of the GRU employee was simply entered into the criminal case. The indictment describes in detail the role of each member of the group, but there is no information about its “leader” Cherkasov. In addition, the lawyers involved in that case did not mention his name in the case file. The investigators also checked the data from the police database “Magistral”, which records the trips of Russians, and established that Cherkasov was in Brazil during the events specified in the criminal case and could not participate in the sale of heroin from Moscow to Lipetsk.
According to the investigation, between 2015 and 2021, when Cherkasov was allegedly “wanted” for drug trafficking, he visited Russia five times using documents with his real name.
Source: Ukrgate
