A real-life Bond plot: The rise and fall of Russian spy Anna Chapman

Anna Chapman carefully developed over years her charismatic but ambitious businesswoman persona that allowed her to move effortlessly among elite circles of society and network. However, the Russian was leading a double life, having followed in the footsteps of her notorious father.

On 27 June 2010, she was rounded up by the FBI in Manhattan along with nine other Russian spies across the United States for being unregistered foreign agents. The then 28-year-old quickly caught the eye of the media due to her looks with the New York Daily News saying of her social media profile pictures that they “could easily be headshots in a casting call to find the next Bond girl.”

From Russia with love

Born Anna Kushchenko in 1982, she grew up in the city of Volgograd in southern Russia. Anna’s father was Vasily Kushchenko, who had a prominent role in the Soviet intelligence services.

She attended the Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia in Moscow, a prestigious institution where she got a degree in economics. In 2001, Anna met Alex Chapman, a British psychology student, at a nightclub. Five months later they got married in Moscow.

But they got divorced nearly as fast as they tied the knot, with their relationship lasting just a few years. “Towards the end of our marriage she became very secretive, going for meetings on her own with ‘Russian friends,’” he told The Telegraph shortly after her arrest.

He said that her father, who he described as “scary,” controlled everything in Anna’s life. “I felt she would have done anything for her dad,” he told the outlet.

While it might have been a whirlwind wedding, it had given her an in to British society and the ability to begin cultivating connections. She also set up a successful real estate website as well as other entrepreneurial endeavors.

She later moved to New York City in 2009 where she continued to pursue business opportunities while immersing herself into the social scene. She attending charity events, exclusive parties and upscale nightclubs where she would network and gather intelligence.

While she made a solid effort to keep her clandestine activities secret, the FBI began to catch on after some communications were intercepted and suspicious financial transactions uncovered. Her efforts to keep her activities covert ended up drawing even more attention once investigators were on to her.

The Russian spy that didn’t do any spying

When she was arrested, she wasn’t charged with espionage as authorities had no proof that she had passed any state secrets to Moscow. In the end, none of the “illegal” Russian agents were charged with the more serious offence.

The Guardian’s Simon Jenkins actually made light of the failure of the Russians to collect anything useful. “The FBI and the CIA have bust an operation that must have cost the Russians millions and yielded nothing that could not have been gleaned from the New York Times, Washington Post and political blogs,” he wrote in an opinion piece at the time. “Why not leave the spies at it? I am sure they were paying tax. It is laughable that they posed any threat to the American people.”

Biggest spy swap since the Cold War

Just over two weeks after they were apprehended, all ten ‘foreign agents’ including Anna Chapman, were flown to Vienna, Austria and traded for four Western agents who were in the custody of the Russians. It was the biggest exchange of spies since the end of the Cold War.

Anna went on to become a celebrity in Russia appearing in magazines and on TV and receiving awards. She also got involved in politics supporting the Putin regime. Anna got into modeling and went on to start up her own fashion business among other ventures including a consulting and communications.

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