Ex-KGB officer gets four-month time to persuade minister

Mikhail Lennikov, a former KGB officer and his family have been granted four months to persuade the minister of Public Safety to them stay in Canada, there home ever since they arrived here in 1997.

Mikhail Lennikov, a former KGB officer and his family have been granted four months to persuade the minister of Public Safety to them stay in Canada, there home ever since they arrived here in 1997.

Lennikov, his wife and their 17-year old son Dmitri, a student at Byrne Creek Secondary School in Burnaby, have a scheduled interview on the 28th of February. In this interview, the family will receive their final removal instructions.

The only chance they have to stay in Canada is that the Public Safety Minister Van Loan allows the family to stay in Canada on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.

Generally, Canada does not grant permanent residency to former high-ranking members of spy agencies such as the KGB, which was replaced by Federal Security Service of Russia after the Soviet Union disintegration.

Lennikov said that when he applied for permanent residency, he had no idea about the fact that Canada does not grant residency to such people. He said that during his five years with the KGB, he was basically employed as a Japanese translator and was never trained as a high-ranking official, in spite of the fact that he was promoted to the rank of captain.

Lennikov, who left Russia in October 1995, said that they love everything about Canada and that Canada is there true home.

He said that he never desired to join the KGB and that he was recruited out of university because of his proficiency in Japanese.

On his decision to leave the KGB, he said that he chose a different path as he didn’t wanted to make himself available whatever order that might come. He also said that he was always honest with the Canadian Immigration Officials regarding his KGB past.

He said that he never knew that it was something terrible and that he never did anything wrong.