Russia’s security forces say that US secrets of biotechnology have been leaked | Prison News

Eugene Spector, an American citizen born in Russia, was sentenced to 15 years in a Russian penal colony.

Russia’s FSB security service said an American citizen sentenced to 15 years in prison this week was found guilty of leaking biotechnology secrets to the United States.

In a statement on Friday, the FSB accused Eugene Spector, who was born in Russia and moved to the US, of representing the Pentagon.

“An American, working for the Pentagon and a commercial organization associated with it, collected and transferred to another group various information on biotechnological and biomedical topics, including those that constitute state secrets, in order to create the next program by the US. of high-speed genetic testing of the Russian population,” the FSB said.

Details of the espionage case against Spector – who was already serving a three-and-a-half-year sentence in Russia for bribery – were sparse.

Russian state media reported on Tuesday that Spector had been sentenced to 13 years in prison for espionage.

This was added to the existing sentence for bribery and changed to a new sentence of 15 years in prison with preventive sanctions.

The FSB, which usually says if a defendant pleads guilty, did not say how Spector pleaded guilty.

The US State Department this week said it was aware of reports of a US citizen being sentenced in Russia and was monitoring the situation.

The detention of American citizens in Russia has been a major point of contention between Washington and Moscow as relations between the two countries have been strained by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

In August, more than a dozen people were released in a prisoner exchange deal involving people from several countries.

Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former US Marine Paul Whelan – two US citizens imprisoned in Russia – were among those released.