Canada believes a man arrested last week in Montreal as he attempted to leave the country is a Russian spy, authorities said on Tuesday.
The foreigner was found using a fake Canadian identity -- Paul William Hampel -- on November 14, officials said.
"The Canadian Security Intelligence agency has reasonable grounds to believe that the foreign national alleging to be Paul William Hampel is a member of the SVR, the foreign intelligence service component of the Russian intelligence services," said documents posted on Tuesday on a federal court website.
Thus, the man "is a danger to the security of Canada," they said.
The espionage charges are the country's first in a decade.
In 1996, Canada expelled two Russians accused of being sleeper agents who had taken the identities of Canadians who had died in infancy.
Canada's counter-espionage head Jim Judd said last month that, far from having disappeared, spying was on the rise in Canada and used increasingly sophisticated techniques.
Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay also recently accused China of industrial spying, which Beijing denied.
Hampel is accused of being an "elite Russian intelligence officer" with the SVR or Foreign Intelligence Service, deployed in "particularly sensitive operations" and linked to the 1996 spy case of Ian and Laurie Lambert, who were later identified as Dmitriy Olshevsky and Yelena Olshevskaya, respectively.
While living in Canada, the Lambert likely acquired bank accounts and work histories, as well as credit histories and "other paraphernalia of modern Western adult life," said court documents.
Canadian authorities suspect Hampel was "secretly deployed" and operated "covertly under assumed names and life stories" that required extensive background research, while masquerading as a Canadian citizen, gathering information "for over a decade both within Canada and abroad."
The Canada Security Intelligence Service said they found no birth or death records for Hampel in Canada, and his birth certificate number was legally assigned to another individual, adding it was likely "fraudulent."
He used it to obtain three Canadian passports in 1995, 2000 and 2002, the court documents said.
Canada Border Services Agency officials recovered the birth certificate in a travel pouch under his shirt when he was arrested, as well as a Canadian passport, the equivalent of 7,800 Canadian dollars (6,800 US) in five different currencies, several bank and credit cards, three cellular telephones, two digital cameras and a short wave radio.
According to reports, his arrest was authorised by Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day and Immigration Minister Monte Solberg.
Ottawa claimed in court documents, citing a November 2002 article in "Jane's Intelligence Digest," that Russia's spy agency had received "a direct order from (Russian) President (Vladimir) Putin to radically increase foreign intelligence gathering activities ... particularly in cities with sizeable Russian émigré communities, such as Toronto."
This occurred despite Russia's co-operation with US and Canadian intelligence agencies on anti-terrorism matters, halting organised crime and nuclear trafficking.
Hampel was deemed to be a "highly trained intelligence officer" who lived with no legal cover of an embassy or other government entity, and had no diplomatic immunity, the documents state.
He is likely among Russia's "costliest and longest-term undercover agents, who will go to great lengths to spy on their target countries," who also likely communicated with peers in Moscow covertly, they said.