US Citizens Imprisoned 15 Years For Leaking Russian Biotechnology Secrets

Illustration. (Pixabay/peterbwiberg)

JAKARTA - Russia's FSB security service on Friday announced that an American citizen named Eugene Spector was sentenced to 15 years in prison this week after a Moscow court found him guilty of espionage charges, found guilty of leaking biotechnology secrets to his country.

Russian state media did not say how Spector confessed to the allegations in its closed trial.

Details of espionage cases against him were also not published at the time. However, the FSB said on Friday, Spector had acted on behalf of the Pentagon (US Defense Department).

"Americans, acting in the interests of the Pentagon and commercial organizations affiliated with it, collect and transfer various information on biotechnology and biomedical topics, including those of state secrets, to foreign parties to then create a high-speed genetic screening system by the US against the Russian population," the FSB said in a statement. a statement, reported by Reuters December 27.

The FSB, which usually says the defendant has confessed, did not say how Spector - who has served a 3.5-year sentence in Russia for bribery - has confessed.

The Russian state news agency reported on Tuesday that the Spector, which was born in Russia and later moved to the US, had been sentenced to 13 years in prison for spying.

The sentence was added to an existing bribery sentence and turned into a new 15-year prison sentence in a maximum-security colony.

Prior to his arrest in 2021 in the previous case, Spector served as chairman of the Medpolymerprom Group board, a company specializing in cancer-fighting drugs, state media said.

In its first court case, Spector pleaded guilty to helping to bribe the assistant of the former deputy prime minister of Russia, according to Russian state media.