Agent COB was a paid informant of the Czechoslovak secret police according to the agent who claims to have been his handler. Czech TV channel CT24 is reporting:

The head of British Labour Jeremy Corbyn consciously collaborated with the STB and took the money for it, former member of the STB Jan Sarkocy, who Corbyn met, told told ČTK.

Sarkocy also claims Corbyn’s intel was “rated in Moscow as the number one”:

“Corbyn was recruited. He also received money,” Sarkocy said… He added that Corbyn had “won” the StB now a prominent member of the Labour Party, and that Corbyn’s recruiting took place “under the protection of Russia”. Asked if Corbyn knew he was talking not only with a diplomat but also with an StB member, Sarkocy replied that at that time there was no doubt that Czechoslovak diplomats were working for the StB. “All the information we received not only from him but also from one supporting source, to be verifiable, was rated in Moscow as the number one. What we could not do was to do the Russians, “Sarkocy said. Corbyn, for example, participated in the reception of the Czechoslovak embassy about twice a year. Sarkoci claimed that the British Secret Service had learned about the recruitment of Corbyn and that he had to leave Britain afterwards. “If something happened at that time, he (Corbyn) could go to live in Russia,” he said. According to Sarkocy, who, according to archival documents as a member of the StB, worked at the embassy in London from 1986 to 1989 as third embassy secretary, the StB and other representatives of the Labour Party also cooperated. “They were not only those in the position of deputies, but they were also those of the highest authority,” he said without further details.

Corbyn’s office say any suggestion he ever took money is a “ridiculous smear and entirely false”. His spokesman says:

“As Svetlana Ptacnikova, Director of the Czech Security Forces Archive, has made clear, Jeremy was neither an agent, asset, informer nor collaborator with Czechoslovak intelligence. These claims are a ridiculous smear and entirely false. The former Czechoslovak agent Jan Sarkocy’s account of his meeting with Jeremy was false 30 years ago, is false now and has no credibility whatsoever. His story has more plot holes in it than a bad James Bond movie.”