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Ekaterina Zatuliveter, the Russian woman accused of spying while working as a parliamentary researcher in the United Kingdom, is Russia’s most effective spy in 30 years, a top KGB defector has claimed. According to the Daily Mail, Oleg Gordievsky, a double agent for MI6 in the 1960s and 1980s, said that Zatuliveter ‘caused more damage than all other KGB agents put together’. “She was the strongest and most useful KGB agent for the last 30 years,” Gordievsky said. Gordievsky claimed that Zatuliveter, an aide to Brit Liberal Democrat MP Mike Hancock, had gathered information about British naval bases. “She gathered information about British naval bases around the world. She asked important military questions, passed them to the MP, who then pushed them up the chain,” Gordievsky said. “Once answers arrived, she read them, re-wrote them, copied, and passed the copies to KGB agents,” he added. Zatuliveter was held earlier this month after a six-month MI5 investigation into her activities as a researcher for Hancock. The 25-year-old was served with a deportation order on the grounds of national security following concerns that she had access to confidential documents because of Hancock’s position on the defence select committee. Hancock, however, insisted that his former employee was entirely innocent, and said that he was arranging “proper legal representation” to help her fight her case.

‘Brit MP’s researcher was an effective KGB agent’