MI6 officers ‘elevate safety concern over Russian-owned flat overlooking spy HQ’
A complicated flat overlooking MI6’s headquarters has raised safety considerations for British spies, in response to an investigation.
The £1.2m penthouse is positioned throughout the St George Wharf growth in Vauxhall, south London, and appears out straight onto the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) constructing. However, the swanky property‘s Russian homeowners have now reportedly sparked fear for brokers.
The flat’s present homeowners may be traced again to a Soviet-era property about 300m away from the State Scientific Research Institute for Organic Chemistry and Technology – the Russian intelligence chemical website that developed the lethal toxins Novichok, an investigation by i discovered.
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The homeowners haven’t got confirmed direct hyperlinks to the Russian facility. However, three senior UK intelligence sources allegedly instructed the publication the actual fact the corporate’s tackle in Moscow was so near the manufacturing facility is “not a coincidence.”
The three insiders are a lately retired Foreign Office intelligence analyst, a former Foreign Office counterintelligence officer, and a present GCHQ supply. They added the property had the right vantage level to permit anybody inside to see who was coming and going from the MI6 constructing, the I reported.
This means they may presumably work out who’s working as a British spy. Two of the sources mentioned the findings ought to be investigated by the UK authorities and safety companies.
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A counterintelligence officer added the invention is a “thread that needs to be pulled.”
“This is a significant finding,” they mentioned.
“It needs to be looked into.”
The flat is claimed to be at present registered to Poresso Group Ltd, a Russian firm with a listed tackle in Moscow, only a stone’s throw from the Kremlin’s nerve brokers provider. The chemical weapons have been utilized in state assassinations.
The firm’s tackle within the Russian capital couldn’t be extra totally different from its London property. The constructing on the facet of a motorway in jap Moscow is known to play host to a collection of drab Nineteen Forties flats, that are being flogged for about £40,000.
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Poresso Group has two Russian administrators listed on Companies House. However, i’s investigation could not discover any signal of the administrators or their present whereabouts.
The former intelligence officer on the Foreign Office added the Russian homeowners have been “smart enough” to keep away from an apparent hyperlink to the corporate, which is sanctioned by the US and EU.
Meanwhile Alicia Kearns, the Conservative chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, mentioned “additional scrutiny” ought to be put in place across the secretive London constructing.
“It’s no surprise that hostile states are buying up properties for surveillance purposes – but it’s the Government’s job to stop them by working with neighbouring buildings,” she mentioned. “I used to work from a high rise next to SIS – from our windows we were able to identify both individuals and patterns of behaviour.”
The Daily Star has contacted the National Crime Agency (NCA), the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and the Home Office for remark.
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