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Kirill Gryaznov was arrested and accused of being a spy after multiple intelligence agencies learned of an alleged plot to “destabilize” the Paris Olympic Games.
The 40-year-old Gryaznov, a chef and former Russian reality TV star, was arrested and charged with “intelligence with a foreign power with a view to incite hostilities in France” after law enforcement agents raided his home in Paris and found documents of “diplomatic interest.”
According to French media outlet Le Monde, Gryaznov kept his work for the Federal Security Service (FSB), Russia’s domestic intelligence service, a secret from those he knows in France.
Gryaznov was noticed by several European intelligence services starting in May 2024. On May 8, in Turkey, the self-proclaimed “private chef” was due to board a plane from Istanbul to Paris. Except that the FSB agent had had too much to drink. Barred from boarding the plane, he took another flight from Bulgaria. On the way, in a restaurant, he called his superior from the Russian domestic intelligence service. Two months before the start of the Olympic Games in Paris, the young man blurted out that “the French are going to have an opening ceremony like no other.”
Le Monde, who gained access to Gryaznov’s email inbox, reports that he received emails asking him to “check” the profiles of Russian intelligence officers as early as the late 2000s.
“We think very strongly that he was going to organize operations of destabilization, interference, spying,” French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin told BFM television. “He’s now in the justice system which will be able to confirm the suspicions of the police.”
Gryaznov studied Cordon Bleu cooking in France and worked at Courchevel, a ski resort popular with Russians, Le Monde reports. He also appeared on a 2019 Bachelor-style reality TV show called called Choose Me.
Prior to that, he worked as a lawyer and was a partner in a Russian investment fund and with a Luxembourg-based mergers and acquisitions firm.
He now stands accused of being a Russian spy and “passing intelligence to a foreign power in order to arouse hostilities in France” and faces up to 30 years in prison.