Anna Chapman is legendary not only in Russia, but all over the world. Her biography became widely discussed after the high-profile scandal with the failed special operation of Russian intelligence in the United States, as a result of which she was deported from the States as a spy in 2010.
The mysterious history of the TV presenter is still closely intertwined with her career - the documentary project "Secrets of the World with Anna Chapman", based on the disclosure of sensational facts in the world around, is very popular and rivets public interest in the personality of its author and presenter.
Chapman Anna Vasilievna (nee Kushchenko) was born on February 23, 1982 in Volgograd. Anna's father was a diplomat - a serious man with a harsh outlook on life. Anna's mother, on the other hand, was a gentle and calm person. The woman taught in high school almost all her life. When little Anechka went to school, her parents left for Moscow, and left their daughter in Volgograd with her grandmother.
Anna Chapman as a child.
The girl studied in many schools - she started from the 11th gymnasium in Volgograd, then entered the art lyceum, and spent the last academic year in a Moscow secondary school. After finishing school, Anna entered the Peoples' Friendship University of Russia at the Faculty of Economics, which she graduated in 2003.
Anna Chapman in her youth.
In 2001, the girl meets her future husband. Young people meet at a party in London. Alex Chapman - that was the name of Anna's chosen one. The young man, the son of a prominent British businessman, worked in a British recording studio.
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The only obstacle to their relationship was the long distance. Since Anna was studying, the young people decided to get married in Moscow. After marriage, Anna continued her education, and Alex worked in Moscow as an English tutor. According to some media reports, this marriage was fictitious and organized with the aim of obtaining British citizenship by the Russian spy.
The girl took her husband's surname. Perhaps this decision was made because her husband was the namesake of the same Mark Chapman - the killer of John Lennon.
In 2003, Anna graduated and soon moved to her husband in the UK.
There she and her husband formed the Southern Union company. Using a home computer, the couple were engaged in financial transactions with Zimbabwe: they helped Zimbabweans living in the UK to transfer money to their homeland cheaper than the banks offered. Funds were transferred to Zimbabwe through numerous bank accounts and shell companies.
Alex Chapman told the press that between 2002 and 2005, he and his wife transferred "millions" of pounds in this way. According to the British newspaper The Guardian, Southern Union continues to exist; its director is Steve Sugden, a 36-year-old telecoms seller based in Dublin. Sugden himself claims that he does not know anything about Southern Union, and his signatures on the documents are forged, and intends to demand an investigation into this case.
For about three months (from May to July 2004) Anna worked for the London-based private aviation company NetJets Europe. Chapman's resume contains information according to which she spent almost a year in the airline leasing and selling business-class aircraft to Russia, but according to other sources, she performed “much less responsible work” in NetJets Europe, in particular, she was an assistant assistant.
From August 2004 to July 2005, Chapman worked as an ordinary employee in the small business division of Barclays Bank.
In 2005, Chapman left her husband and moved to another apartment in London, in 2006, the couple broke up completely. According to Chapman's ex-husband, one of the reasons for their separation was Anna's desire for material well-being, which Alex could not provide for her.
According to Chapman's ex-husband, after their separation, Anna met with a banker from Switzerland and an industrialist from the United States. Alex, who is currently involved in psychiatry, said that during the existence of their marriage, Anna turned from a carefree girl into an "arrogant and unpleasant" woman, entering the influential sphere. At the same time, according to him, Anna is an "extremely intelligent" girl, and her IQ is 162. Anna's friend, with whom she rented an apartment after breaking up with her husband, said that Chapman had met many rich people in London. among them was the disgraced oligarch Boris Berezovsky.
At the end of 2006, Chapman returned to Russia, where she created and headed the company "Search for Real Estate" (PropertyFinder Ltd.), which in 2008 founded the sites Domdot.ru (real estate search engine) and VEB-kompromat.com (web-compromat.com) - an encyclopedia of compromising evidence, exposing officials.
According to the newspaper "Vedomosti", some "business angels" provided Anna with several million dollars to open the company on the eve of the global financial crisis, however, according to Chapman herself, she received the start-up capital for the project by pawning and selling all her jewelry.
But the "real estate search engine" founded by Anna turned out to be unprofitable and did not bring the expected results, which prompted Chapman to create TIME Venchures, which was to search for promising Russian companies in order to open American branches on their basis. To promote it, she moved to the United States. According to the American investigation, this project became only a cover for the girl's activities in America - she was repeatedly noticed in cooperation with Russian representatives of the UN, with whom she allegedly exchanged secret information and encrypted files.
Spy scandal
In June 2010, Anna Chapman became the main figurant of the loudest spy scandal, as a result of which she was arrested by FBI agents as an employee of the Russian special services. She was accused of working for the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, in particular, in an attempt to obtain classified information about the US policy towards Iran, about American nuclear weapons, as well as the disclosure of personal data of congressmen and CIA leaders. Foreign media have repeatedly indicated that the reason for the failure of the spy Anna Chapman was Barack Obama, to whom she got too close.
Anna Chapman in the USA.
The arrest of Anna Chapman took place in Manhattan. Then she and ten other people, including Vicky Pelaez, Donald Heathfield, Mike Zotolli, Mikhail Semenko and Patricia Mills, were accused of working for foreign intelligence services and maintaining contacts with Russian special agents. True, legally, according to American law, Anna is never listed as a spy, since she was unable to declassify US state secrets.
In July 2010, Russia agreed with the United States on the exchange of several prisoners accused of high treason and espionage, which allowed Anna Chapman and several other people to be officially extradited from the United States to their homeland, where she was not going to stay for a long time, but planned to return to the UK.
The move of the Russian spy did not take place - after being accused of espionage, she lost her British citizenship. It is known that the failure of Anna Chapman's espionage mission took place after she applied to the police with a statement about an attempt to recruit her as a "Russian intelligence officer."
But the FBI claims that Chapman was arrested as a result of a successful special operation - an American intelligence officer was sent to her, who, under the guise of a Russian intelligence officer, asked Anna to hand over a fake passport to another "colleague" at the designated place where the spy ambush was organized. At the end of 2010, it became known who handed Chapman to the CIA. The whistleblower of Anna's activities turned out to be a Russian intelligence agent, Alexander Poteev, who fled to the United States, who was sentenced in Moscow in 2011 in absentia to 25 years in prison.
Escaped scout Alexander Poteev.
Secrets of the World with Anna Chapman
On July 19, 2010, the American tabloid New York Post announced that Anna would like to agree to publish a book about her story and sell the rights to its adaptation for 250 thousand dollars. Lawyer R. Baum denied this allegation, referring to the agreement signed by Chapman with the US Federal Attorney's Office, which prohibits her from receiving income from the publication or film adaptation of her story, however, according to Baum, nothing prevents his client from earning on "celebrity status." The newspaper "Komsomolskaya Pravda" claims to have a recording of a telephone conversation in which A. Chapman bargains with the newspaper about the cost of an interview around $ 25,000.
In August, she was (as befits all those deported) in mandatory quarantine in the Moscow region, where Russian Prime Minister V. Putin met with all ten ex-spies.
On October 1, 2010, A. Chapman was hired as an advisor on investments and innovations to the president of Fondservicebank, while the bank stressed that Chapman works with a free visiting schedule and this is not her only job. In November, in order to implement a "cultural project" related to "space exploration", she attended the launch of the Soyuz-TMA-M spacecraft at the Baikonur cosmodrome as an advisor to the bank. Chapman plans to implement a project to create a new uniform for Russian cosmonauts.
After returning to Moscow, the Russian spy received many offers in the field of show business. Then she starred in several erotic photo shoots for "Playboy" and "Heat", after which she was called "Agent 90-60-90".
Model Anna Chapman.
In the same period, the mystery woman entered the council of the "Young Guard of United Russia", in the ranks of which she was engaged in the patriotic education of Russian youth. In 2011, the ex-spy became the host and author of the documentary project "Secrets of the World", broadcast on the REN-TV channel.
All issues of "The Mystery of the World" with Anna Chapman are sensational and mysterious stories that reveal the mysteries of the modern world, in which high-ranking officials are involved. In a new role, the legendary Russian spy tells the audience the whole truth about every attribute of everyday life used by people.
The documentary "Secrets of the World" with Anna Chapman has a multi-million audience that is eagerly awaiting the next release of the program. More than 120 episodes of the program have already been broadcast, in each of which the presenter personally takes part in dangerous experiments and disclosure of hoax stories.
In addition to the Mysteries of the World project, Anna Chapman is the editor-in-chief for Venture Business News and is also writing a book on innovation. Along with her journalistic activities, since 2010, she has been a member of the board of directors of Fondservicebank, which specializes in the rocket and space industry. In the summer of 2015, the bank came under the reorganization procedure by Roskosmos, as a result of which all advisers to the president, including Chapman, were forced to terminate cooperation with the FSB.
Personal life
Anna Chapman's personal life, like her biography, is full of mysteries and mystery. After breaking up with her husband and several novels, she made a marriage proposal on her Twitter to the disgraced ex-CIA officer Edward Snowden, a "fighter for ideals", who immediately reacted to the proposal and announced that he was ready to marry Chapman, despite what.
In 2015, the media reported that Anna Chapman gave birth to a son. As befits a real scout, the 33-year-old celebrity successfully hid the news of the future replenishment from the public, but later on social networks admitted to her audience that she had become a mother and thanked fans for the congratulations. Chapman also hides who the father of her child is: there were legends about the novels of the red-haired ex-intelligence officer, although she still bears a slightly changed ex-husband's surname.
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