Sergei Tretyakov (intelligence officer)

Colonel Sergei Olegovich Tretyakov (Russian: Сергей Олегович Третьяков; 5 October 1956 in Moscow – 13 June 2010) was a Russian SVR (foreign intelligence) officer, who defected to the United States in October 2000.

Tretyakov was a career KGB/SVR officer. Before being posted in New York, he worked in Ottawa, Canada.

Since 1995, he worked in New York in the position of SVR deputy rezident (station chief) under the diplomatic cover of first secretary at Russia's mission at the United Nations. It was later revealed that Tretyakov was a double agent, passing secrets to Washington, from around 1997.

He was reported to have been close to Sergey Lavrov, Russia's UN mission head.

In October 2000 Tretyakov disappeared with his wife, daughter, and cat. He told the SVR, in a statement, "My resignation will not harm the interests of the country." It was not until the end of January 2001 that his defection was first reported by the Associated Press. The news was then broken in the Russian media, which reported that Russia's Foreign Ministry was insisting on having a consular meeting with him to make sure he was not forcefully kept by the US side.

On 10 February 2001, it was revealed, with reference to "several American officials familiar with the case," that the defector "was in fact an officer in the S.V.R., Russia's foreign intelligence service, successor to the Soviet-era K.G.B." The timing of his decision was reportedly partly affected by the death of his mother in 1997, the last close family member still living in Russia the state could threaten.

Upon defection, Tretyakov was debriefed by the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He was given one of the largest US financial packages ever for a foreign defector, over US$2 million, and he was resettled, along with his family, in an unknown location with a new name.

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