Another look at Robert Maxwell's Soviet connections

British intelligence officers suspected that Robert Maxwell, the disgraced publishing tycoon, was a Soviet agent, according to newly released Foreign Office papers.

Decades before Maxwell was discovered to have plundered his employees’ pension fund, the intelligence services had already secretly marked him out as a rogue and possible traitor.

One report submitted to the Information Research Department (IRD), a covert Foreign Office unit, said of him: “A thoroughly bad character and almost certainly financed by Russia.”

The papers, filed at the National Archives in Kew, London, and released last month, add to the mystery and intrigue surrounding the early years of Maxwell, the former Mirror newspaper publisher who died aged 68 when he either fell or jumped off his yacht in 1991.

The shady dealings in Berlin which the documents detail portray a figure reminiscent of Harry Lime, the main character in the novel and film The Third Man, who traded across the front line of the cold war in post-war Vienna.

Posted by David on November 2, 2003 11:26 AM