Retired secret service agents attempt raid on VFS Global. Raid attempt is foiled.

Alexander Korzhakov, former head of the Russian security service under Boris Yeltsin and former United Russia deputy to the State Duma, recently contacted Russia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs, Federal Antimonopoly Service, Federal Tax Service and the FSB, to request an investigation into the company VFS Global, reports Novaya Gazeta, a popular Russian newspaper.

Armed with information from an email he received, Korzhakov requested that the investigation be launched into the Russian operations of the Swedish company, as well as its Russian affiliates VFS Russia, OOO Interstamp, OOO Interlink Service, OOO Navigator, and OOO Interkom, all of which provide services for obtaining visas to European countries. According to the email, sent by someone calling himself “alexkim”, “VFS Russia receives about 1.7 million applications from Russian citizens each year. The firm is thus privy to in-depth locational information about Russians who have traveled abroad, and could sell this information, creating the threat of a monopoly in the Russian tourism industry. And what’s more, this information could be conveyed to foreign intelligence agencies.”

State officials reacted calmly to Korzhakov’s claims, limiting their response to the pat answers prepared for such cases. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs even explained in detail to Korzhakov that “visa centers are used currently by the consular offices in Russia of about 20 nations. And most of these (16 countries) outsource to VFS Global, which is engaged in this line of work in 45 countries around the world. VFS Global has an ISO/IEC 27001 certificate from the European Union for information security management systems, which in turn demonstrates the high level of safeguards with which this personal data is handled.”

Most likely, Korzhakov already knew everything written in these answers. It’s hard to imagine otherwise in someone chosen by the people to represent them. According to VFS’s lawyers, this was the same old story of a raid on a Russian company: a deputy’s allegations, a flurry of investigations, the seizing of the business. And investigations by the Rosbalt news agency only further supported this idea.

“VFS Global’s representatives maintain that Korzhakov has much deeper motivation than the infamous letter. Motivation tied to the tender held last year by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in which VFS Global won the rights to manage four foreign visa service centers in Finland.”

VFS’s most aggressive competitor in the bid was Russian Visa Services, a company registered in Helsinki less than three months before the tender, on April 19, 2010. There is little information available about this joint stock company with EUR 2,500 in registered capital—likely due to its recent inception—although the pasts of several of its beneficiaries are replete with connections to the Russian special forces.”

According to the information RUSSIA! received from the source related to the issue, after Korzhakov’s allegations, someone who claimed to be the real reason behind Korzhakov’s activity emerged and requested a meeting with VFS Russia’s security adviser. At the meeting, a certain Andrei, invited by Korzhakov, voiced the complaints of the attack’s instigators. In exchange for the halting of security officials’ investigations, Andrei demanded that a significant portion of the outsourced business be placed under the control of “third parties.” Specifically, visa service centers in Spain, Czech Republic, France and Finland. Later, an alternative was also proposed: a payoff of 4 million euros.

Then the usual spy-novel nonsense started: According to Andrei, the FSB allegedly has thick dossiers on the upper management of VFS and its affiliates. Dossiers that could quickly turn into criminal cases, depending on their level of compliancy.

It is interesting that just after Korzhakov filed his claims, “informers” started appearing in various diplomatic missions, reporting the difficulties that VFS Russia was facing. Reports that contained tax information and trade secrets.

Strangely, these sources “forgot” to mention the Russian State Duma’s official reply to the strongly worded letter from VFS Global. But it’s laid out in black and white there: all investigations launched in response to Deputy Korzhakov’s allegations have come to an end, and no violations were found.
This means that for now VFS Global will continue its rapid expansion in Russia, and thousands of Russians will receive visas before the New Year’s holidays with no problems or long lines.

[Novaya Gazeta]

[Rosbalt New Agency]