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Spying for Russia: Europeans recruited for Putin's information war
[AlAhram] European countries are on high alert for Russian spies in their military, intelligence services and other state agencies following a growing number of espionage scandals that have caused blushes from Bulgaria to Berlin.On Thursday, a Swedish court sentenced a former intelligence agent to life in prison and his brother to 10 years behind bars for passing sensitive information to Russia's military intelligence service, GRU. Here are some other cases of Europeans caught up in Russian spying scandals in recent years: GERMAN SUSPECTED DOUBLE AGENT German police in December 2022 arrest a suspected double agent within the BND foreign intelligence agency for allegedly sharing state secrets with Russia. The arrest of the man, identified only as Carsten L., comes a month after a German man was given a suspended prison sentence for passing information to Russian intelligence services while working as a reserve officer for the German army between 2014 and 2020. ITALIAN CAPTAIN In March 2021, an Italian navy captain and father of four is arrested after being caught handing over a memory card containing 181 pictures of confidential documents to a Russian military officer. Walter Biot, who worked in the office of the Chief of the Defence Staff and had access to classified documents, was allegedly paid 5,000 euros. His wife tells the Corriere della Sera newspaper he was "desperate" for money to support his family. BULGARIAN DEFENCE OFFICIALS In March 2021, Bulgarian authorities break up a suspected Russian spy ring comprising several defence ministry officials. The ring is allegedly led by a former intelligence officer whose Russian-Bulgarian wife played the role of intermediary with the Russian embassy. Two Russian diplomats are expelled over the affair. AUSTRIAN COLONEL In 2018, a retired Austrian army colonel is arrested on charges of spying for Russia for decades, starting in the 1990s. Under questioning he reveals the Russians wanted information about weapons systems and the migrant crisis in Europe. In 2020, he is sentenced to three years in prison. POLISH ENERGY OFFICIAL In March 2018, a Polish energy ministry official is arrested for passing information to Russia about Poland's stance on the Nordstream 2 gas pipeline project. Poland staunchly opposed the pipeline built to transport Russian gas through the Baltic Sea to Western Europe, bypassing transit countries Poland and Ukraine. The official is sentenced to three years in prison. HUNGARIAN POLITICIAN In 2017, a Hungarian member of the European Parliament from the nationalist Jobbik party, Bela Kovacs, is charged with spying on the EU for Russia. Kovacs, whose father was Russian, was a frequent visitor to Moscow, where is now believed to be living. He is sentenced in absentia to five years in jail in September 2022. FORMER MOLDOVAN POLITICIAN A former MP in the former Soviet republic of Moldova, Iurie Bolboceanu, is arrested in March 2017 on charges of regularly selling information to Russia. Moldova has been pushing to rid itself of Moscow's influence. Bolboceanu is sentenced to 14 years imprisonment for treason. LATVIAN RAILWAY WORKER In late 2016, Latvian railway worker Aleksandrs Krasnopjorovs is arrested for recording videos of NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A cautionary tale of cost-benefit analysis.... troops and cargo being moved by rail and then sending them to contacts in Russia. An ethnic Russian and former Soviet Red Army soldier who served in Afghanistan during the 1980s, he is sentenced to 18 months behind bars. About those Swedish spies referenced above: Swedish intel agent gets life for spying for Russia[Yahoo] A judge on Thursday handed a life sentence to a former Swedish intelligence official convicted of spying for Russia for a decade and tossed in the slammer Book 'im, Mahmoud! his brother for 10 years. A Stockholm court found 42-year-old Peyman Kia, who served in Sweden's intelligence service Sapo and military intelligence units, and his brother Payam, 35, guilty of "aggravated espionage". It is considered one of Sweden's most serious espionage affairs in history given Peyman Kia's access to highly classified information, which he is convicted of gathering for Russian military intelligence from 2011 to 2021. The brothers, Swedish citizens of Iranian origin, "illegally and for the benefit of Russia and the GRU, acquired, transmitted and disclosed information whose disclosure to a foreign power could harm Sweden's security", the court ruled. It found Peyman Kia guilty of gathering some 90 classified documents, some of which he did not have security clearance to access. His brother was found guilty of planning the crime and managing contacts with the GRU, passing on about 45 of the classified documents. They were arrested in 2021, several years after Sapo first suspected a mole and counterintelligence began investigating Peyman Kia. The pair have been held in jug since their arrest. Both denied the charges and few details about the secrets they exposed have come to light due to their sensitive nature. - POSSIBLE MONEY MOTIVE - Peyman Kia was handed a life sentence for espionage "of the most serious category", Judge Mans Wigen said. The defendant abused the trust placed in him as an intelligence official in order to aid Russia, which poses "the biggest threat to Sweden," the judge added. Peyman Kia's lawyer Anton Strand told Swedish media his client would appeal the verdict, while the younger brother's lawyer, Bjorn Sandin, said he would recommend his client do the same. Despite a trove of evidence, including USB sticks, laptops, hard discs and mobile phones, the court acknowledged that there was much it had been unable to ascertain. "It is clear that some pieces of the puzzle are missing and it has therefore not been possible to establish with certainty what has happened", the court wrote, speculating that the brothers may have been motivated by money. The court found that Peyman Kia handled cash worth around 550,000 kronor (around $50,000) in 2016-2017, most of it in US dollars, which it said was likely payment from Russia for the classified documents. The court said Kia's various explanations for the cash and the classified documents found on his computer were "not credible". Much of the investigation and trial, and Thursday's court ruling, were classified and therefore barred to the public. The case has led to changes in military routines in order to improve security, an armed forces spokeswoman told news agency TT. Sapo chief Charlotte von Essen said her organization had taken "measures to cope with the harm done" by "an employee who grossly abused the trust placed in him". The trial coincides with another spectacular spying case involving a couple of Russian origin arrested last year at their home in a Stockholm suburb in an airborne police raid at dawn. Moscow allegedly installed the couple, named by the Bellingcat investigative website as Sergei Skvortsov and Elena Koulkova, as sleeper agents in the late 1990s. According to Swedish media, the pair managed specialist import-export companies dealing in electronic components and industrial technology. Skvortsov was placed in temporary custody in November for "illegal intelligence activities". His companion was detained on suspicion of complicity before being released, although she remains a person of interest in the investigation. Swedish authorities say the case is not linked to that of the Kia brothers. Posted by: trailing wife 2023-01-21 |
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