WHERE ON EARTH IS FRANK SCHNEIDER?

Former Luxembourg Intelligence Official Vanishes

The FBI is none too pleased with the French judicial system (and its enforcers) this summer.

The man it had hoped to extradite from French custody to the United States, Frank Schneider, pulled a Houdini in mid May from his home in Audun-le-Tiche, France after extricating himself from an electronic monitoring device on his ankle—three months after his extradition was approved (if not actually executed) by France’s Prime Minister.

Serious oeuf on the French face.

Schneider, 53, once Luxembourg’s foreign intelligence chief, fell out of grace when he was indicted in 2020 by the Southern District of New York for his alleged role in the OneCoin $4 billion crypto Ponzi scheme. He faced charges of wire fraud and money laundering as part of a conspiracy headed by Bulgarian “CryptoQueen” Ruja Ignatova.

It is also believed that, acting as Ruja Ignatova’s “crisis manager,” Schneider used his police and intelligence sources to provide Ruja with confidential information on government investigations of OneCoin, allowing her time to evade arrest.

Ms. Ignatova has not been seen since boarding a Ryanair flight from Sofia to Athens in 2017. Some reports suggest she was then murdered aboard a boat belonging to a Bulgarian drug overlord who allegedly had a major stake in OneCoin; that her body was subsequently dismembered and tossed into the Ionian Sea.

The FBI, however, continues to list Ignatova among their Ten Most Wanted Fugitives.

Bulgaria’s Bureau of Investigative Reporting and Data (an independent journalistic organization) claims that a second Bulgarian mafia kingpin, Krasmir Kamenov, was about to cooperate with U.S. investigators regarding CryptoQueen Ignatova’s disappearance when he was shot dead—along with his wife and two others—on 25 May at his home in Cape Town, South Africa.

This suggests to me that Frank Schneider would not be looking for assistance while on the lam—financial or otherwise—from his former OneCoin co-conspirators, on the basis that, far from welcoming him with open arms, they would see Frank as a liability and seek to silence him lest he be recaptured and decide to implicate others as part of a plea bargain for a reduced sentence.

Schneider was well connected within intelligence circles. In addition to directing foreign intelligence operations at SREL (Luxembourg’s spy service), Frank was, in the early-mid-2000s, that agency’s liaison representative to intelligence services around the globe.

It was the late Tyler Drumheller, then CIA European Division Chief, who introduced me to Schneider when I directed an intelligence service for Prince Albert II of Monaco.

Consequently, we in Monaco created a very special relationship with the Luxembourg service. When I arrived in Luxembourg, it was Frank who greeted my commercial jet on the tarmac and whisked me to a private terminal, then hosted my visit for discussions with SREL director Marco Mille.

Frank, I discovered, had a creative mind that far surpassed others with whom I dealt in the world of intelligence and espionage. He was not risk-averse (unlike many others in our profession) but bold in his operational endeavors—a quality that would lead to his dismissal from SREL when, in 2008, he got caught up in a domestic wiretapping scandal—and, worse, lead to his ill-fated dealings with Ruja Ignatova/OneCoin in the private sector.

Which now begs this question: To where did Frank Schneider flee?

One must presume his passport was confiscated by the French. And there would be no point trying to repatriate himself to Luxembourg, whose prime minister had already determined that the government possessed no legal authority to intervene and attempt to change the judicial venue from the USA to Luxembourg (as requested by Schneider’s lawyers), where the penalties would have been much less severe.

Frank was looking at 40 years in prison if convicted in the USA. And he told the BBC it would cost him between five and eight million dollars to defend himself—money he claimed to not have.

Little wonder he flew the coop.

I’ve already pointed out that seeking help from others implicated in OneCoin would likely be a death sentence, as it may have been for Krasmir Kamenov and also for Ruja Ignatova. Frank is no dummy; he would fully appreciate that they have a strong motive for wanting him gone. (And if he didn’t, and reached out, he’s already dead.)

No European Union country is safe for Frank. And without travel documents he cannot fly or boat commercially to another country, say, to Cuba where fugitives from U.S. justice freely roam—a legacy of Fidel Castro.

So where?

My theory: Like any good intelligence operative, Frank would have carefully assessed all of his options. And he would have determined that he had only one.

Frank would have concluded that Russia is the only accessible country in which he could lay low for a longish period of time and be able to visit with his family (very important to him), especially given wartime tensions between Russia and Europe/USA.

It would have taken Frank only two-and-half-hours by ground transportation from his home to reach the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Brussels, Belgium.

There, he would have attempted to strike a deal with the FSB or SVR: A full debrief of his time, operations and contacts (along with the identities of Russians recruited by Western intelligence services) while serving in a senior position with Luxembourg’s SREL in exchange for safe passage and safe haven in Moscow and a teaching position at the SVR’s Academy of Foreign Intelligence. (Frank was a teacher in Britain before he entered the Luxembourg service.)

As Frank would say, It is not ideal, and actually rather grim—but it’s better than spending the rest of my life in Leavenworth.

And he’s probably right.

Following approval from Moscow, the FSB would have exfiltrated Schneider in a specially designed vehicle by road to Serbia, with onward travel to Russia.

By now, I suspect, Frank is dining on caviar and beef stroganoff in Cafe Pushkin, yukking it up with NSA traitor Edward Snowden (who, by now, is homesick for all things American and wishing he’d never entered into a Faustian pact with the Russians).

I’ve seen it all before with the CIA’s rogue traitor Edward Lee Howard. A defector’s life is very sad.

Let the damage control begin (though I’m in no doubt that intelligence and counterintelligence bigwigs are in denial. Same old, same old…).