Nikolai Glushkov

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Nikolay Glushkov is a former Deputy Director-General of Aeroflot.

Glushkov was appointed as a top manager of Aeroflot on request from Yevgeny Shaposhnikov in February 1996. He found that the airline company worked as a "cash cow to support international spying operations"^[1]: 3,000 people out of the total workforce of 14,000 in Aeroflot were FSB, SVR, or GRU officers. All proceeds from ticket sales were distributed to 352 foreign bank accounts that could not be controlled by the Aeroflot administration. Glushkov closed all these accounts and channeled the money to an accounting center called Andava in Switzerland ^[1] . He also sent a bill and wrote a letter to SVR director Yevgeni Primakov and FSB director Mikhail Barsukov asking them to pay salaries of their intelligence officers in Aeroflot in 1996. ^[1]

Glushkov was arrested in 2000 by Russian authorities on fraud charges (channeling money through Andava), being seriously ill. He was a close ally of the Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky, who gave up his shares of the ORT TV channel^[2] (and, according to some sources, transferred them to Roman Abramovich's Sibneft) for the promise to release him, which was not fulfilled ^[3].

In April 2001 Andrei Lugovoi was arrested and charged with organizing the escape of Glushkov from a hospital (Scientific Hematological Center). However according to Glushkov, that was a set up by FSB. He had no intention to escape, and "was walking in his slippers to the hospital gate to go home for the night, with his guards' knowledge, as he had done a few days earlier" ^[1].

During his trial, Glushkov was incarcerated in Lefortovo prison, and cleared of the fraud and money laundering charges by the court in March 2004, but found guilty of attempted escape and "abuse of authority" ^[1].