On May 8, 2024, K. was scheduled to fly from Istanbul, Turkey, to Paris. But the FSB agent had had too much to drink. Barred from boarding the plane, he took another flight leaving from Bulgaria. On the way, in a restaurant, the chef, who had trained at a Parisian culinary school, made a phone call to his superior in Russian domestic intelligence. Two months before the start of the Olympic Games in Paris, the young man had exclaimed that "the French are going to have an opening ceremony like no other." Le Monde consulted our security and foreign sources to retrace his steps.
On July 21, K. was arrested at his Paris residence, the Paris prosecutor's office said. According to several European intelligence services, a map of an elite Russian special forces unit, acting under the command of the FSB, was found in his home. On Tuesday, July 23, a judicial investigation was opened into "intelligence with a foreign power with a view to provoking hostilities in France," a crime which carries a 30-year prison sentence. K. was indicted on the same day and remanded in custody.
The man in his forties claims to work as a "private chef" and posts cooking tutorials on social media. His accounts have several thousand followers, mainly Russians, who also know him as a reality TV show contestant. According to the résumé written by the Russian citizen and consulted by Le Monde, the man was a partner in a Moscow investment fund before working in other financial companies.
At the beginning of 2010, K. moved to France and suddenly changed career paths. Trained at a Parisian culinary school, the young man moved to Courchevel, a ski resort prized by the Russian elite, in November 2011, for an internship in a Michelin-starred palace. He remained there until March 2012.
Worrying Russian interference
Six months later, on September 9, 2012, he received an e-mail, which Le Monde was able to see, from Viviane H., the owner of the apartment he rented in the 2nd arrondissement of Paris, in which she checked in on him. In his reply, K. stated that he had returned to Moscow to work as an "official" for the "Russian government," without providing any further details. This entry appears nowhere on his résumé, consulted by Le Monde. At the end of April, the Russian was summoned to a civic training day, one of the compulsory stages in the integration process in France.
K.'s French wanderings came to an abrupt halt at the end of July 2024. At 6 am, police officers from the BRI unit (Search and Intervention Brigade), acting on behalf of the DGSI (the French General Directorate for Internal Security), entered his apartment on Rue Saint-Denis in central Paris. Le Monde found that their intervention took place within the legal framework of a "home visit" – an administrative measure against persons deemed dangerous or suspicious. The BRI found "documents of diplomatic interest."
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