The Canadian Security Intelligence Agency asked a Montreal court Wednesday to deport an alleged Russian spy said to have lived in Canada for more than a decade under a false identity.

In documents filed with the Federal Court of Canada, CSIS says the man is a danger to national security and used a fraudulent Ontario birth certificate to get three Canadian passports.

The passports and birth certificate are in the name of "Paul William Hampel" but CSIS says the man is actually a foreign national who is an agent with the SVR, the successor spy agency to the KGB of the former Soviet Union.

The CSIS documents describe the man as "an illegal." In intelligence jargon, that means a spy posted in a foreign country with an assumed name and identity. The documents say the man calling himself Hampel has operated in Canada and abroad, but gives no details of his operations.  

The Canadian spy service says it is trying to find Hampel's real identity.

The man was arrested by border security officers at Montreal's Pierre Elliot Trudeau airport last week, carrying $7,800 in five currencies, several cellphones and a shortwave radio.  

The documents filed in Federal Court say the Russian spy service deploys "illegals" to gather intelligence on foreign countries and steal Western "financial and industrial secrets to aid the failing Russian economy."

Two such agents were deported from Canada in June of 1996, the CSIS documents say. A man and woman who had been living in Canada under assumed identities were found to be Russian "illegals."