Dutch revoked visa for Russian ‘spy’: Volkskrant

The Netherlands in 2014 withdrew the visa for a Russian physicist who was working at Eindhoven University of Technology because of spying allegations, the Volkskrant said on Tuesday afternoon.

The man, named as 28-year-old Ivan A, was attached to the Max Planck Institute in Erlangen in Germany and was involved in research linked to the development of super computers, the Volkskrant said.

He came to the attention of the German authorities in late 2013, shortly after joining the Dutch university. They had been shadowing a Russian diplomat and discovered that he met A every month at a cafe in Aken, close to Maastricht and that money changed hands.

The German secret service alerted the Dutch AIVD who began their own investigation. A’s visa for Schengen countries was revoked and he and his wife returned to Russia. He denies all allegations of spying, the paper said.

A spokesman for the AIVD confirmed that last July the organisation had told Eindhoven the man was a security risk, and that the university responded appropriately by ending his contract.

The AIVD’s 2014 report states there had been an increase in Russian intelligence operations in the Netherlands following the unrest in Ukraine. In addition ‘it had been established’ that Russian security services were running agents in the Netherlands who were collecting political and academic information.