Reino Gikman | |
|---|---|
| Born | Reino Gikman March 27, 1930 Terijoki, Finland (present-day Zelenogorsk, Russia) (alleged) |
| Disappeared | June 1989 (aged 59) Vienna, Austria |
| Status | Missing for 35 years, 8 months and 26 days |
Reino Gikman (allegedly born March 27, 1930, Ino, Terijoki, Finland[1]) was the alias used by an undercover agent for the Soviet KGB who operated in Western Europe. Gikman used a Finnish passport and spent several years in Finland developing his illegal residence cover by posing as a Finn. The KGB was able to create fake Finnish citizenships by inserting fake births into the church records with the help of a priest of the Finnish Orthodox Church. Gikman's fake personality was however the result of the theft in 1952 of four registry books of church records from the Orthodox repository in Kuopio. He received his first Finnish passport at a Finnish embassy, before ever entering Finland. He moved to Finland in 1966, and held various jobs in Helsinki in the 1960s, working e.g. in the Suomalainen Kirjakauppa bookstore. In 1968 he "married" a fictitious woman named Martta Nieminen, with whom he had an equally fictitious son named John Robert Gikman, who was reported to have been born in Düsseldorf on 10 June 1968.[2]
- ^ Wise, David (1990-05-13). "The Felix Bloch Affair". The New York Times. David Wise is the author of The Spy Who Got Away and other books about intelligence and espionage. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2017-07-08.
- ^ Kari, Kallonen (2017-02-06). "Suomen passi on vakoilijan varuste – Supo on paljastanut suomalaisia valehenkilöitä". Päivän Lehti (in Finnish). Retrieved 2021-11-17.