(((Russian spy actually IS a geek, and has the photo website to prove it.
The guy who called himself "Paul Hampel" is actually a pretty good photographer.
He went way out of his way to set up that website and vanity-publish that book. )))
(((I have no idea what "Hampel" was up to in his remarkably extensive global wanderings, and quite likely neither does anybody else, but this
Canadian article is kind of amazing for its insights into modern spy tradecraft. You wouldn't think a guy could keep a successful low profile in the days of Google, but, well, they're deporting him back to Russia and, unlike Rosanne Minchew, he's still entirely anonymous.)))
(((More remarkable yet, his website's somehow still up. It's pretty good.
Lake Ohrid, hey, that place is gorgeous.)))
http://www.mybeautifulbalkans.com/
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=7ab6dafd-2c3e-4344-88f0-215f815d5614&k=51904
Jet-setter's life veiled by secrecy
Adrian Humphreys and Stewart Bell; with files from Graeme Hamilton in Montreal, National Post
Published: Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Many who have done business with Paul William Hampel have never met him. Many who have met him know nothing about him. He ran a company for a decade that did no business. He gave as his address a Montreal house where he does not live.
The man named in court documents yesterday as "an elite Russian intelligence officer" who stands accused of using Canada as his base for espionage has almost no public profile, yet he paid for the vanity publication of a lavish book of his own scenic landscape photographs.
Some acquaintances trying to contact him dial a number in Montreal. Others call a cellular phone in Serbia, while still others call an office building in Ireland.
From the tiny Isle of Sark to Serbia's capital Belgrade, from Montreal's Notre-Dame-de-Grace neighbourhood to the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, the man known as Paul William Hampel has led a curious and difficult to document life.
If Mr. Hampel is not a foreign spy, he certainly is an international man of mystery. (((Let's be charitable – it's entirely possible to just be an international man of mystery.)))
"He's a ghost, basically," said Colm Hanley, a spokesman for the Irish firm that registered Mr. Hampel's company in 1997.
(...)
A regular guy, perhaps, but also a man who seems to value his privacy to an inordinate degree.
Mr. Hampel established a shadowy corporate presence in Dublin in 1997, two years after he received his first Canadian passport, although he appears to have no Irish home.
At the time, that was not a problem. Ireland was a popular place for incorporation because it allowed firms to register there but trade outside the state, allowing favourable tax status.
Listing his occupation as "consultant," his nationality as Canadian, his address as a unit in a modest, three-storey, yellow-brick apartment block on Montreal's St. Jacques Street, and giving his date of birth as Dec. 11, 1965, Mr. Hampel became the sole owner of the shares in Emerging Markets Research & Consulting Ltd., on July 1, 1997.
It is the same date of birth, and the same neatly constructed signature, that appears on Mr. Hampel's applications for his Canadian passports. Canadian documents, according to a summary of allegations released yesterday by the Federal Court, gave him the ability to travel and covertly further his spycraft.
His corporate identity is not mentioned in the documents.
"What we do is register limited companies for people. We prepare the paperwork on their behalf," said Mr. Hanley, head of company formation with ICC Information Ltd., the firm that registered Mr. Hampel's company.
Incorporating a company gives it a legal identity, allowing the firm's owner to act as a corporate entity rather than a person.
"We provide people with all of the documentation that they need for opening bank accounts and things like that – all of the legal documentation," he said.
The company had a broad purpose, according to the registration papers, one that would give a company director a good reason to travel widely and ask a lot of questions.
It would deal in "a national and/or international context with any aspect of tourism, travel and hotel operation, guesthouse or apartment operation, catering or restaurant, aircraft, ship and mechanically propelled vehicle ownership, hiring or chartering, entertainment and sports of all kinds," the corporate papers say.
(((Sounds like a great job!)))
His passport application, made in 2002, also lists his occupation as travel consultant, although a previous application in 1995 said he was a lifeguard. (((Spent a lot of time in the gym.)))
His company intended to "undertake all kinds of commercial, industrial, statistical, technical and scientific research" (((Another great job, plus you get to take lots of tourist photos))) and listed as its capital one million Irish pounds – about $2.27-million. (((Okay, where'd that come from?)))
"When we get mail for that company we would forward it on to the Canadian address," Mr. Hanley said.
The company's directors were listed as Mr. Hampel and Simon Ashley Couldridge.
Mr. Couldridge, 47, appears to have been a nominee agent, someone paid to act as a director without actually having hands-on corporate involvement.
Not that Mr. Couldridge was anxious to discuss his role.
"I wouldn't be able to help you but thanks for calling," he said when reached on his cellphone. "Thanks but no thanks." (((What a great international-man-of-mystery-facilitator thing to say.)))
His reluctance to talk, however, may be more about Mr. Couldridge than Mr. Hampel.
He is based on the tiny Isle of Sark, a strange fiefdom in the English Channel with 600 citizens where cars are prohibited and playing the radio in public is not allowed. (((Sounds like a great place for tech-deprived spies.))) Sark attracted attention from the wealthy and the privacy-obsessed in the 1980s because its fiduciary regulations were far below international standards. The glut of dubious companies establishing themselves in Sark without any physical presence there was dubbed the "Sark Lark."
Mr. Couldridge has been in the news before: When scandal over an explicit porn site erupted in Ireland in 2000, (((note Internet connection))) its corporate directorship was traced to Mr. Couldridge; when a questionable time-share scheme left a British couple swimming in debt, Mr. Couldridge was again listed as the corporate director.
In all cases, he appears to have acted merely as a nominee director of the firms. According to Irish records, at the time that Mr. Hampel started the firm, Mr. Couldridge was a director of 122 registered companies. (((122!)))
In its first detailed financial statement filed with the Irish Company Registration Office, Mr. Hampel's business did not suggest success.
"The company did not trade during the financial year and received no income and incurred no expenditure," the statement says. "The company made neither a profit or a loss." (((How handy! Who wouldn't want a company like that!)))
It is a statement that appears, almost exactly, in each subsequent financial statement filed over the years. The only activity of the company, in public at least, was a shuffling of paper identifying its nominee directors.
In late November, 2001, Mr. Couldridge resigned and was replaced by Sean Lee Hogan, a 35-year-old British man living in Cyprus. A former partner of Mr. Couldridge's in the offshore corporate services industry, the two set up a company in Limassol, Cyprus, a move that coincided with more regulation on Sark. (((Sark to Cyprus... bring your camera.)))
Cyprus also offers tax incentives and its location is touted as being a part of Europe yet closer to Asia and the Middle East.
By 2002, Mr. Hampel was listing Montreal's Somerled Avenue as his new home. Today, it is a well-kept, detached house on a corner lot in a quiet neighbourhood close to Concordia University's Loyola campus. There is a side apartment with a For Rent sign in the window. The owner of the home said he did not know Mr. Hampel but declined to comment further.
The last known tenant of the rear apartment said she had only lived there one year and does not know who the previous tenant was. She said she never received stray mail for a Paul Hampel.
Mr. Andjic, of Vreme, said Mr. Hampel would often ask professional photographers what they thought of his pictures.
"He said he fell in love with the Balkans and he started to take photographs all over as he travelled. He asked me what I thought and I said, 'They are beautiful pictures. Everything is done in the right way – the exposure and everything is fine but there is no story in the images. There are no people in them. There is no emotion in them.'
(((Oh come on, that assessment's hardly fair. They're the only evidence this invisible guy is leaving of his sojourn on earth. They're very emotional, you just have to know what you're seeing. It's all about the "harmony" and the "contrast.")))
Mr. Hampel accumulated photos from at least eight Balkan nations for the book.
The 76-page volume, with 55 photos and English captions to accompany them, was published in 2003 and was available in some European bookshops.
The book was promoted on a Web site, www.mybeautifulbalkans.com, that was registered to Mr. Hampel at the same Somerled address in Montreal.
Calls to the Montreal telephone number he listed in the Web registration – received on an answering machine for "Paul Hampel" – have gone unanswered for a week. A Montreal woman is listed as a Canadian distributor for the book. It lists a name and e-mail address only and several messages have brought no reply.
Meanwhile, in Cyprus, Mr. Hampel's company was again on the move – at least on paper.
Mr. Hogan resigned and was replaced by Michael Gray, a representative of the Alterego Group, a company whose promotional material describes its mandate as helping clients "achieve the highest degree of anonymity, privacy and confidentiality." (((Looks like you get what you pay for from "Alterego.")))
"My services to his company at that time were simply on a nominee basis," said Mr. Gray, 40, also a British citizen, when contacted in Cyprus. He declined to provide any further information without the approval of his client.
Although Mr. Gray was the last listed business associate of Mr. Hampel, he has not been contacted by police, he said.
Told the findings of the Post's investigation into Mr. Hampel, Martin Rudner, Director of the Canadian Centre of Intelligence and Security Studies at Carleton University, said the man's behaviour was consistent with that of an "illegal," a term for an undercover intelligence agent.
Mr. Hampel's company is now dissolved, ending its unspectacular run on Sept. 3, 2004, with Mr. Hampel still listing the Somerled Avenue house as his address.
Mr. Hampel, however, will face a court hearing today in Montreal, the start of the process that could see him deported. (((How do they know where to send him?)))
(((As a final fillip, this is the hardware he had on him when they busted him at the airport:)))
"At the time of his arrest, Hampel was carrying the fraudulent Ontario birth certificate, a Canadian passport, $7,800 in five different currencies and several bank and credit cards, and index cards with detailed notes about Canadian history. He also had three cellphones capable of use in different countries, two digital cameras and a shortwave radio."
