Οne of the
10 Russian spies expelled from the U.S. this year has been hired as a senior
adviser with the country's state-run oil giant Rosneft, Kommersant cited
company sources as saying Monday.
Andrei Bezrukov, who went by the alias Donald Howard Heathfield in the U.S., would
serve as an adviser to the president, the business daily reported.
He might eventually be promoted to vice president for international projects,
it said.
"Prime Minister Vladimir Putin kept his promise of finding jobs for the
spies arrested in the United
States, ensuring that they led 'interesting,
bright lives,'" Kommersant observed on its front page.
The former intelligence agent Putin met the 10 sleeper agents on their return
to Russia
in July, singing patriotic songs with the group and vowing to secure them a
happy future in their native country.
"They will work, I am sure, they will work in worthy places. I do not
doubt that they will have an interesting, bright life," Putin said after
the meeting.
Since then, Anna Chapman, whose glamorous looks and mysterious lifestyle have
made her into a minor international celebrity, has been hired as a
representative of a little-known asset management company called
FondsServiceBank.
Kommersant said Bezrokov came to the U.S.
in 1999, settling in Boston,
where he became a partner with the Global Partners Inc. consulting company. He
launched his own advisory outfit in 2006, the paper said.
The sleeper agents, many of whom had been working for years undercover in the U.S., returned to Russia
in a sensational spy swap in which Moscow
sent four Russian convicts to the West.
Putin told CNN this month that the group "didn't cause any harm to the
interests of the United
States of America," adding that their
assignment was to provide information "in crisis periods" only.