Startling issues were unraveled by intelligence files unearthed by a spy expert which reveal that the now Russian PM Vladimir Putin, once a KGB officer was branded a wife-beating love cheats. It is said he had numerous sex affairs and also claims to have had an illegitimate heir in Germany where he was commissioned. Well Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for the Russian prime minister, dismissed the allegations in the documents, saying that the "stories were complete nonsense."

Whereas the documents from the archive of the BND, Germany's spy agency, paint a dark picture of the Russian prime minister, who plans to return to the presidency next year. The information surfaced in a story run by the newspaper Berliner Zeitung based on documents found by Erich Schmidt-Eenboom, a respected BND expert who has published books and papers on the agency. Dieter Arndt, a BND spokesman, refused to discuss the revelations contained in the documents.

In a coup for the German intelligence services the agent code-named Balcony owing, apparently, to her large breast size gained the confidence of Lyudmila Putina and became something of an agony aunt to her. In a series of meetings with the BND spy at the Putins' house Putina, angered by her treatment at the hands of her husband, claimed to be the victim of a man prone to both violence and extramarital affairs. The allegations of philandering added substance to long-standing speculation that when the Putins left East Germany in 1990 following the collapse of the Berlin Wall, Vladimir left behind an illegitimate child.