Amid Reports of Family Ties to Russian Intelligence, Longtime Epstein Assistant Speaks Out

An Elite Soviet Family

During the Soviet era, Pozhidaeva’s family counted among a privileged elite. Her maternal grandfather, Marcel Platonov, was a military surgeon and gynecologist who participated in the infamous Soviet operation that triggered the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. He was granted an apartment in the House on the Embankment, a Stalin-era building on the Moscow River infamous for hosting the cream of the Soviet elite.

Pozhidaeva’s parents, Yury and Irina, graduated from the Military Institute of Foreign Languages in Moscow, whose alumni often served in the KGB’s First Chief Directorate, which is responsible for foreign intelligence, or as military attachés.

Her father was trained as a Persian-language military interpreter. In 1978, on the eve of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, he was sent to the country as part of an advisory corps.

Little else is known about his career with the Soviet military. Pozhidaev left the armed forces in the late 1990s and spent several years selling coffee and wine. But in December 2017, the retired lieutenant colonel started working for a subsidiary of Rostec, an anchor of Russia’s military-industrial complex. His work often took him to Tehran, where the company was helping install energy infrastructure.

The following year, Pozhidaev was named deputy head of security for the Iranian division of Russian Railways, which was working on a strategic transport corridor in the region. In 2020, Pozhidaev concurrently became deputy general director for security at Caspian Services, the main contractor for Russia’s transport ministry on the same project.

OCCRP described Pozhidaev’s biography to several experts on the Russian security services, who pointed out that such positions are typically reserved for formally retired security service officers who continue to report to their agency, a position known in Russian as “seconded personnel” (APS). Orders assigning such officers are signed by the FSB director.

“He is part of a total model of the post-Soviet FSB, in which they alternate between the private sector and serving state projects overseas, where their language skills and knowledge of the environment help serve the Russian state and its interests,” said Louise Shelley, an professor emerita at George Mason University in Virginia and longtime expert on Soviet and Russian affairs. “He fits a profile.”

Aside from Yury Pozhidaev’s employment history — and his daughter’s emailed reference to his FSB past — reporters from the Russian outlet Explainer found another tie to the agency. According to a leaked courier database, they reported, he sent several pieces of correspondence to the pension department of the FSB Directorate for Moscow and the Moscow Region in 2022.

Asked about this, Pozhidaeva said her father had to communicate with pension authorities to claim a retirement benefit: yearly visits to sanatoriums. She did not explain why he was writing to an FSB office, rather than to the defense ministry. He did not respond to emailed questions from OCCRP.

Pozhidaeva’s own background drew the attention of Russian media. Her resume, found in the files, shows that she received her undergraduate and Masters degrees from the Moscow State Institute of Foreign Relations, an elite springboard for careers in diplomacy and intelligence. She learned multiple foreign languages and interned at the Russian foreign ministry, the oil giant Lukoil, and Russian investment firms.

Despite this privileged background, she stressed in her interview with OCCRP that she had long felt insecure about her family’s financial status as compared to wealthier classmates, that she grew up in a building without an elevator, and that she never owned a car while in college.

In her mid-20s, Pozhidaeva pivoted to a career as a runway model. She was introduced to Epstein in Paris and was brought to the United States by the modeling agency MC2 Model Management, funded by Epstein but run by a disgraced associate.

Afterwards, Pozhidaeva’s visa was sponsored directly by an Epstein foundation. Her attorney, Brad Edwards, noted that Epstein routinely recruited foreign models who wanted to stay in the U.S. and held their visa status over their heads to trap them in his network.

He also used other coercive tactics, Edwards said. “If [the women] had any medical issues, [Epstein] made sure they went to his doctors. Those doctors provided the records to him, not even to the women,” Edwards said.

But Pozhidaeva’s story is complicated by the copious evidence in the Epstein Files that she actively recruited young women for the financier.

The emails show her actively helping women in Ukraine and elsewhere get passports or Schengen visas. “That’s the Kiev contact I like a lot, very sweet and might be naughty too,” she wrote in one email about a prospect.

Another email shows her sending a nude photo of a candidate to Epstein. In others, she disparages potential candidates: “Bad skin, huge boobs, said [she was] 24yo,” she wrote about one young woman.

Ali Hopper, a counter-trafficking expert and policy advocate who frequently testifies before federal and state legislatures in the United States, says that people these situations often reside in a gray area between being a victim and victimizer.

“When a victim is pulled into a trafficking operation and later takes on a role recruiting, managing, or profiting off other victims, that shift matters,” she said. “You can hold two truths at once: they were victimized, and they later contributed to the victimization of others.”

Almost seven years after Epstein’s controversial death in a Manhattan jail cell, Pozhidaeva said he still haunts her.

“Sometimes I even feel like he’s alive, you know, I still have nightmares he’s alive,” she said.

Does she think he hanged himself with bedsheets? Pozhidaeva is unsure.

“It’s hard to imagine him being so brave to take his life. Because it’s not like he had a gun and shot himself or took a pill and fell asleep,” Pozhidaeva said. “It’s a very wild way of taking his life.”

Zack Kopplin contributed reporting.

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