The strange story of Sergey Cherkasov, the spy who went to Trinity

Russian spy Sergey Cherkasov spent four years deep undercover as a politics student in Trinity College Dublin. His classmates knew him as Victor Muller Ferreira, a Brazilian national, eager to further his education and his prospects in Ireland.

When he graduated – with honours – in 2018 he used his degree to enrol in the prestigious Johns Hopkins University in Washington DC – a win for the Russian spy which he reported to his handler with glee, the email revealed in this podcast.

During his time in Ireland he was reporting back to Moscow, one of the many intriguing details revealed in recent days in court filings in Washington where he has been charged with acting as an illegal agent of the Russian intelligence service; in other words – a spy.

He is being charged in absentia as he is in prison in Brazil on fraud charges. Irish Times public affairs editor Simon Carswell has been reporting on Cherkasov and he tells In the News of the picture emerging of a spy busy making connections but unusually careless about leaving an information trail. A carelessness that finally caught up with him when he applied for an internship at the International Criminal Court in The Hague - the court which has issued an arrest warrant against Russian president Vladimir Putin for war crimes. Presenter: Bernice Harrison. Producer: Suzanne Brennan.