tal , 6 hours ago (edited 3 hours ago)

Ms. Simes, a jewelry designer, was also charged with money laundering

Hmm.

I distinctly remember reading about another woman who was operating as a jewelry designer being recently in the news.

turns back clock two years

bellingcat.com/…/socialite-widow-jeweller-spy-how…

Socialite, Widow, Jeweller, Spy: How a GRU Agent Charmed Her Way Into NATO Circles in Italy

The next day, 15 September 2018, a woman with a long, Latin-sounding name bought a one-way ticket from Naples, Italy, to Moscow. For around a decade, this individual had travelled the world as a cosmopolitan, Peru-born socialite with her own jewellery line. Later that evening, she landed in Moscow and is not known to have left Russia since.

The name on her passport was Maria Adela Kuhfeldt Rivera, and as Bellingcat and its investigative partners have discovered, she was a GRU illegal whom friends from NATO offices in Naples had for years believed was a successful jewellery designer with a colourful backstory and chaotic personal life.

It was shortly after she moved to Paris that she registered her own jewellery trademark in France under the brand Serein.

This was likely the seeding phase of a long-term plan by the GRU to deploy their illegal spy as a self-sufficient businesswoman and socialite. In the years that followed, it provided cover as she sought to access the highest echelons of NATO’s Allied Joint Force Command in Naples, Italy.

Maria Adela née Olga Kolobova’s jewelry website:

web.archive.org/web/…/www.serein.it/

Anastasia Simes’ jewelry website:

anastasiasimes.com

:-/