WASHINGTON — A former top Russian spy who defected to the U.S. after running espionage operations from the United Nations, Sergei Tretyakov, has died in Florida, his wife and a friend said Friday. He was 53.
News of his June 13 death came the same day the United States and Russia completed their largest spy swap since the Cold War.
Tretyakov’s defection in 2000 was one of the most prominent cases involving Russia’s intelligence agency in the past decade. Tretyakov later said his agents helped the Russian government steal nearly $500 million from the U.N.’s oil-for-food program in Iraq.
WTOP Radio in Washington first reported his death Friday. His widow, Helen Tretyakov, told the station he died of natural causes.
She said she announced his death Friday to prevent Russian intelligence from claiming responsibility or “flattering themselves that they punished Sergei.” Helen Tretyakov said her husband warned U.S. authorities when he defected that Russia was expanding deep-cover operations.
“He was aware that the part of the SVR budget for supporting illegals increased dramatically in the 1990s,” she told WTOP. The SVR is the Russian intelligence agency that succeeded the KGB after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
However, she said, there was no direct link between his information and the 10 people arrested last month as Russian spies near Boston, New York and Washington.
“Sergei was called ‘the most important spy for the U.S. since the collapse of the Soviet Union’ by an FBI official in my book,” Pete Earley, who authored a 2008 book about Tretyakov, wrote on his blog. “Unfortunately, because much of what he said is still being used by U.S. counterintelligence officers, it will be years before the true extent of his contribution can be made public — if ever.”
A private funeral was held three days after Tretyakov’s death, in keeping with Russian Orthodox tradition, and more than 200 people attended a service in the days after, Earley said.
