What's New
A United States citizen currently jailed in Russia on bribery charges has received an additional 15-year sentence for espionage, according to Russian media reports on Tuesday.
Why It Matters
The imprisoned U.S. citizen, Eugene Spector, faced espionage charges in August 2023, filed by a Moscow court, though the specifics of the allegations remain undisclosed.
Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Moscow has gone to great lengths to pursue individuals critical of the war. High-profile dissidents have faced severe sentences, with some prominent figures sent abroad as part of a recent prisoner swap with Western countries.
In addition, detentions on charges of spying and collecting sensitive data have become increasingly frequent in Russia since the start of the war.
What To Know
Once a prominent executive in Russia's medical equipment industry, Spector received a 3.5-year prison sentence in September 2022 for facilitating bribes to Anastasia Alekseyeva, an aide to former Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich. Alekseyeva, in turn, was sentenced to 12 years behind bars in April after accepting lavish bribes in the form of two high-end international vacations.
Dvorkovich, who served as deputy prime minister under Dmitry Medvedev from 2012 to 2018, now leads the global chess organization FIDE.
Spector was formerly a Soviet Union citizen, per Russian business daily newspaper Kommersant and was taken into custody by a Moscow court in 2023.
"The court granted the investigator's request to take Spector, who is suspected of committing espionage, into custody," the Lefortovo Court of Moscow told Russia's state-run news agency Interfax in 2023.
Who Is Spector?
Spector was accused of mediating a bribe in the form of two holiday packages—to Thailand and the Dominican Republic—worth 4 million rubles ($43,000) in 2015 and 2016. The alleged recipient was Alekseeva.
Spector had been under arrest since February 19, 2020, according to Russian news outlet RBC. He was born and raised in Russia, but he emigrated to the United States and received American citizenship, according to local media reports.
Spector is married to a Russian woman, speaks good Russian and had lived in St. Petersburg for the five years prior to his arrest.
The independent Russian news outlet The Moscow Times first reported in 2020 that Spector was listed alongside three Russian nationals by the European Patent Office office as the inventors of an antibody that can be used for treating cancer.
What People Are Saying
In 2023, Alexey Melnikov, executive secretary of the public monitoring commission of Moscow, said that Spector was being held in satisfactory conditions.
"He has board games, a TV, a refrigerator, a kettle," Melnikov said, adding that Spector's literary tastes are quite specific.
"He prefers financial literature and books about new technologies," he added.
What's Next
It is currently unclear if the U.S. State Department will respond to the new sentence brought upon Spector.
This article includes reporting from The Associated Press.
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