Mikhail Kutsik, one of the figures in the infamous 2010 U.S. spy scandal, landed a job in Gazprom's international business department, Interfax reported Monday, citing a source at the company.
Kutsik, who went by the name Michael Zottoli, was arrested as part of a presumed spy ring whose most famous member was Anna Chapman, a red-headed femme fatale who many believe acquired international fame due to her good looks. Besides them, eight others were arrested and later deported.
According to , Kutsik was appointed deputy head of planning for international economic activity. The gas monopoly, however, has not yet commented on the information.
Last year, it was reported that Kutsik's wife, Natalya Pereverzeva, had gotten a job as an adviser to Transneft head Nikolai Tokarev.
Tokarev denied that claim, saying Pereverzeva had not been accepted to any post at Transneft.
Another member of the ring, Andrei Bezrukov, or Donald Heathfield as he was known in the U.S., was reported to have found work at Rosneft in 2010, but Rosneft's president at the time, Eduard Khudainatov, quickly rejected that information.
Even if the report about Kutsik is true, though, he isn't the first member of the spy ring to find noteworthy work. On returning to Russia after deportation from the U.S., Chapman almost immediately began working as an aide to the president of FundServiceBank, and she later went on to host her own show on Ren TV.
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