Maria Adela Kuhfeldt Rivera was a Peruvian socialite and jeweler, abandoned in the Soviet Union as a child and beloved as an adult throughout her social circles spanning from Malta to Naples. She was a grieving widow and an active member of Naples’s Lions Club.
She also did not actually exist.
“Maria Adela” was actually Olga Kolobova, a Russian spy for the nation’s foreign intelligence agency, the GRU. The daughter of a renowned Russian colonel, she spied for Russia for a decade abroad, according to a report released by Bellingcat, a Netherlands-based investigative journalism group, on Thursday.
Kolobova’s goal over the 10 years she spent in Europe was to gain access to top NATO security officials. However, activating her identity proved difficult.
In December 2006, the Congress of Peru received a report from the Ministry of Justice citing the name Maria Adela Kuhfeldt Rivera, among others, as fraudulent and could require further legal action after her application for Peruvian citizenship was denied in 2005.
Despite this report, the Russian intelligence agency decided to continue with the “Maria Adela” identity, Bellingcat reported.
Later, Bellingcat and several other investigative teams discovered Kolobova’s cover name was part of a set of at least six other GRU spies. The most notable are Vladimir Moiseev, indicted among several others for the poisoning of Emilian Gebrev, and Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov, indicted in the attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal.
Once her passport cleared, Kolobova, now “Maria Adela,” began working toward a life of luxury and social extravagance. Her earliest travel data stamp her in Rome in February 2011, studying gemology at an unnamed university. In October of that year, she moved to Paris to begin her MBA, according to the outlet.
‘PERSONA NON GRATA’: SIX RUSSIAN SPIES EXPELLED FROM FRANCE AFTER INVESTIGATION
?Meet Maria Adela Kuhfeldt Rivera, widow, jeweller, and socialite. The love child of a German father and a Peruvian mother, born in Callao, Peru, and abandoned in Moscow by her mother during the 1980 Olympic Games. pic.twitter.com/wHo6qSmKik
— Eliot Higgins (@EliotHiggins) August 26, 2022
All information gathered about Kolobova came from travel records, immigration data, and most importantly, recollections from people in her social network, Bellingcat reported.
Maria Adela married a Russian Ecuadorian man in July 2012 who later died of pneumonia and Lupus, according to a death certificate obtained by Bellingcat.
“Border crossing data show that ‘Maria Adela’ was not in Russia during her new husband’s death, and only arrived in Moscow a month later, on 15 August 2013,” the report said. Her late husband’s friend did not even know they were married, and he said in an anonymous interview that he assumed the marriage was arranged to help someone obtain a European passport.
A few years later, Kolobova started her own jewelry line, trademarking the name Serein in October 2015. The trademark is set to expire on Oct. 25 this year, according to the trademark’s registry.
She opened a boutique that was frequently used as a club, where she met several high-profile people, one being former British Cosmopolitan editor Marcelle D’Argy Smith. Many people she befriended have remained silent on the subject. After being contacted by Bellingcat or local news agencies, they either blocked numbers or refused to comment.
One who did speak to investigators was Col. Shelia Bryant, who at the time was the inspector general for U.S. Naval forces in Europe and Africa. Bryant said she and her husband found the backstory of “Maria Adela” to be convincing and interacted with Kolobova in social settings, helping her through “what appeared to be emotional issues with men.”
Her travels brought her to many places with NATO bases, including Bahrain and Naples. While it is unclear if she gained access to the bases, there are records that she did attend events hosted and sponsored by NATO, the report said.
“In [Bryant’s] recollection, ‘Maria Adela’ interacted socially not only with American but also Belgian, Italian and German NATO staff and officials,” the report stated.
These officials were considered to have clearance to photographs and classified documents, Bellingcat reported. She also was the secretary of Naples’s Lions Club, founded by a NATO member.
Kolobova abruptly left Italy in 2018 without having her cover blown — something investigators find “unusual” about her decadelong scheme, as GRU spies typically do not self-terminate their missions, the report said.
Using a leaked dataset that held other spies’ covers and facial recognition, investigative teams eventually discovered “Maria Adela” was Kolobova. Social media proved a useful tool, and some of the posts Maria Adela made coincided with purchases Kolobova made, such as an Audi. The photo used in Kolobova’s WhatsApp profile was also used on Maria Adela’s Serein Facebook.
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Kolobova wrote in a Facebook post that she had cancer and was recovering to explain her quick disappearance. Smith was one of the last people to hear from Kolobova after she moved back to Russia.
“There are [a] lot of things which I can’t (and never be able) to explain,” Kolobava wrote in a WhatsApp message to Smith. “But missing you a lot and very very much.”
