Catalogue description Olga Borisovna PRAVDINA (alias 'Margaret') and Vladimir Sergeevich PRAVDIN (alias Roland...

Olga Borisovna PRAVDINA (alias 'Margaret') and Vladimir Sergeevich PRAVDIN (alias Roland Jacques Claude ABBIATE, Francois ROSSI, Dr BENOIT, Georges QUINN, Roland SMITH): Monegasque, French, Italian. As ABBIATE and carrying a British Passport issued in Nice, PRAVDIN arrived in the United States in December 1925. In April 1926 he was arrested for impersonating an Immigration Officer, jailed for two years and then deported to the UK. In September 1937 travelling under the alias BENOIT he was implicated in the shooting in Switzerland of the would-be GPU defector Ignace REISS. ABBIATE visited Mexico in 1937 and 1939. From 1941 to 1946 as PRAVDIN he worked for Tass in New York. His wife, who was employed there also by Amtorg, was identified by the self-admitted Russian agent Elizabeth BENTLEY as identical with a woman known to BENTLEY only as 'Margaret' who acted as her case officer