In November 2002 the premises of the Irkutsk organization Baikalskaya Ecologicheskaya Volna (Baikal Ecological Wave) were searched by the local department of the FSB. The organization’s mission was to monitor Lake Baikal, the oldest (25 million years) and deepest (1,700 meters) lake in the world, situated in southeast Siberia. The FSB announced that it had opened a criminal case against the organization for divulging state secrets, and simultaneously provided local newspapers with materials indicating that the environmental group was complicit in espionage. The charges were dropped in a matter of days due to public outcry.
9
In the business community, Norway’s telecommunications corporation, Telenor, became an early target of the FSB’s spy campaign. In December 1998, Telenor formed a strategic partnership with VimpelCom, Russia’s leading cellular telecommunications operator, and by the mid-2000s Norwegians owned 26.6 percent of VimpelCom’s voting stock.
10
In 2005, Telenor was prevented by the FSB from buying additional shares that would have increased their ownership to 45 percent. The security service sent a letter to the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service ruling the stock purchase unacceptable because Vimpelcom was considered a strategic Russian company, and Telenor was suspected of intelligence activities with close ties to Norway’s secret services.
11
The Federal Anti-Monopoly Service refused to grant approval for the purchase.
IN 2003, THE FSB appointed Nikolai Oleshko deputy head of the security service’s Investigative Directorate, which made him the chief spy hunter. Oleshko had begun his career tracking down spies within the Soviet Army Group in East Germany in the 1980s. In the early 2000s, he became known as an expert in such cases and was put in charge of investigating espionage cases in the directorate. In 2004, when he was elected head of the directorate, he began a restructuring campaign that gave high priority to counter-intelligence. The First Section, responsible for investigating spy cases, had a serious staff shortage.
12
According to lawyer Yuri Gervis, who served a decade in the KGB’s investigation department before resigning in 1993, “The professional employees are lost. For instance, the First, the so-called ‘spy section,’ has no investigators except for the chief of the section, who graduated from the FSB Academy. There is nobody to catch real spies, and therefore the FSB is making spies out of people who communicate with foreign organizations in the course of their work.” As result, “espionage cases are conjectural, weakly backed by evidence, and all classified top secret in order to conceal errors.”
13
In 2004 Oleshko convinced the FSB’s leadership to put his First Section in charge of all regional branches, a move that increased the significance of the section and the importance of the “spy” department overall.
The new system was given its first real test not long after it was established, when Oleshko’s officers were asked to intervene in a case that had almost been ruined by the regional office in Kaluga, a city south of Moscow.
In 1999 Igor Sutyagin, a military analyst at the Institute for the Study of the United States and Canada, was accused by the Kaluga Regional FSB Department of giving information to foreign intelligence. The FSB had determined that Sutyagin had contacted Sean Kidd and Nadya Lock, two representatives of Alternative Futures, a mysterious London-based firm that had hired Sutyagin as a part-time consultant on questions related to Russian military technology. Sutyagin met Kidd and Lock in Europe and Britain, and was paid for his consultations.
14
The FSB told journalists that Kidd and Lock were U.S. defense intelligence officers and presented what the FSB described as phone numbers and an address for Alternative Futures in London. But by then the firm had disappeared.
The suspicious character of Alternative Futures appeared to be confirmed by the authors of this book. Soldatov and Borogan went to London in 2004 in search for the third person in the story: Christopher Martin, who was named in the Alternative Future’s advertisement leaflet. The authors also wanted to check out the address of Kidd’s house in Copthorne, Crawley, West Sussex, mentioned by Sutyagin’s lawyers as a place where he met Kidd and Lock. With the help of British journalists, the authors found the phone number of Christopher Martin. Remarkably, what Sutyagin had understood as being Kidd’s house turned out to be registered to Christopher Martin. Soldatov called Martin to ask him about his connections with Sutyagin. But Martin was firm in his statement: “Yes, it is my address. But I know nothing about the case. Periodically I hand over the house as I often work abroad. I have nothing to add.”A month after the conversation the house was put for sale.
Sutyagin was charged with treason and tried in Kaluga. During the proceedings, the Kaluga FSB failed to present evidence that Sutyagin transferred secrets to Alternative Futures and failed to find anyone who had passed Sutyagin secret information he could sell to the firm. Instead, the FSB made the case that Sutyagin collected information by analyzing publications in the Russian press. That analysis alone, it seemed, was deemed an act of treason.
In 2001, the Kaluga Regional Court ruled that there were insufficient grounds to prosecute Sutyagin, and the case was sent to Moscow for more detailed investigation. Although Kaluga’s FSB officers involved in the investigation were promoted, it was generally thought in Moscow that the case had been bungled and might be lost. In 2002 the Sutyagin case was transferred from Kaluga to Moscow, and Sutyagin was placed in Lefortovo prison. Oleshko was personally put in charge of the next trial, this time held in the Moscow City Court. In response, Sutyagin requested a trial by jury, then a new practice for Russian courts.
A jury trial of the Sutyagin case, chaired by Judge Petr Shtunder, began in November 2003. Three months later Shtunder announced he would not proceed with the case. He gave no explanation. In March 2004 a new trial began, this time chaired by Judge Marina Komarova. In April the new jury found Sutyagin guilty and he was sentenced to fifteen years of hard labor.
After the sentencing, Sutyagin’s astonished lawyers declared the jury had been manipulated by the FSB, but to no avail. Soon after the verdict, the defense discovered that one of the jurors had been on a list of candidate jurors for the Moscow District Military Court. It was a mystery how he had ended up at Moscow City Court. The juror appeared to have been specially transferred to the trial. In August Sutyagin’s lawyers identified the juror as Grigory Yakimishen.
Who was Yakimishen? The authors attempted to find out more about the mystery juror. The authors learned Yakimishen was a longtime KGB foreign intelligence agent who had served in Poland and had been involved in the biggest spy controversy in that country, when in 1996 the prime minister was accused of spying for Russia and was forced to resign. Yakimishen was identified in the Polish media as the source of information about the prime minister’s involvement with Russia. According to Russian law, secret service officers are not permitted to sit on juries. In the case of Sutyagin’s trial, jurors were polled about past work experiences and were dismissed if they listed any involvement with law enforcement or secret services. While others admitted they had and were dismissed from jury duty, Yakimishen did not reveal his past, according to Anna Stavitskaya, Sutyagin’s defense lawyer.
Irina Borogan called Yakimishen at home, but their conversation was very brief.
“Grigory, we are preparing a publication about the Sutyagin case. Could you tell me, did you serve at the Russian Embassy in Poland in 1994-1996?” asked Borogan.
“I pledged in court not to compromise the secrecy of the investigation, and the court has a copy of my work record book,” said Yakimishen.
“But could you say whether you were working in Poland or not?” Borogan insisted.
“Next question, please,” was the answer.
“Could you comment on the scandal linked to your name that was widely covered by the Polish media?” asked Borogan again.
Finally Yakimishen lost his patience and said, “I do not intend to answer any more questions. Don’t call me ever again.”
It appeared that Sutyagin had been convicted of treason by a jury that included an intelligence officer previously involved in a spy scandal. More broadly, the Sutyagin case illustrated the way justice under Putin would be decided: not by rule of law but by arbitrary rule of a few people in power. The state had decided to make a point with Sutyagin by finding him guilty of treason. Despite evidence suggesting a rigged jury, he was sent to prison by all means possible.
15
In July 2010 Sutyagin was exchanged for one of the Russians recently accused of espionage in the United States.
EVERY YEAR THE FSB reports the discovery of something on the order of a hundred traitors and dozens of spies. In 2008, according to the agency, 149 foreign spies were unmasked. In December 2008 FSB director Alexander Bortnikov told journalists, “The activities of forty-eight career officers of foreign intelligence services have been stopped, as have the actions of 101 local assets of foreign special services.”
16
Despite the impressive statistics, there is no equivalent number of actual prosecutions and trials on spy allegations in Russia every year.
For example, the FSB considered “career officers” to be those foreigners whose activity was found suspicious and they were prevented from visiting Russia, while “local assets” were deemed to be those Russians who were suspected of the intention to sell state secrets to foreign intelligence services. The local assets cited in the statistics are never identified by name because most of them are so-called initiators—people who were going to contact the foreign embassies on their own initiative but were caught early. In most cases the intended recipients never got wind of them.
Although the Russian secret services have had difficulty making spy charges stick, they have nonetheless reaped generous promotions for their efforts.
In 1997, the secret services tried to prosecute military journalist Grigory Pasko in Vladivostok in the Russian Far East. Pasko had been working with a Japanese TV station on reports about nuclear waste dumping in the oceans. Because he was being paid by foreigners, he was an easy target for the Russian secret services. In the case, supervised by German Ugryumov, then head of the local FSB department, Pasko was accused of espionage. Pasko was acquitted in 1999, but in 2000 the Supreme Court tried him again. In December 2001 he was found guilty and sentenced to four years in jail. He was released in January 2003.
For his part, Ugryumov was promoted to deputy director of the FSB in Moscow. In January 2001 he was put in charge of counterterrorist operations in Chechnya. The same year, Vladimir Putin conferred Russia’s highest award, the Hero of the Russian Federation, on Ugryumov. It was widely rumored that Ugryumov was slated to become the next director of the FSB when he died in May 2001.
17
Lower-ranking officers on the Pasko case were also promoted. Investigator Alexander Yegorkin, who headed the investigative group on Pasko, was appointed chief of the Investigation Section of the FSB Pacific Fleet Department. When the court found out that Yegorkin had violated the Criminal Proceedings Code during the investigation and had forged documents for the criminal case, he was reprimanded but shortly thereafter promoted to major.
18
Later, Yegorkin was moved to Moscow, where he headed the military counterintelligence division at the FSB Investigative Directorate.
In the late 1990s the city of Vladivostok led the way on the spy front. In July 1999 the FSB searched the apartment and laboratory of oceanologist Vladimir Soifer, purportedly because his ecological research posed a threat to the country’s security. In the end, the case was resolved by a pardon, despite the fact that no crime had been identified. Soifer appealed the pardon in an attempt to clear his name, and in May 2001 the case was dismissed. By then, General Sergey Verevkin-Rakhalsky, head of the FSB department in Primorye, who had initiated the investigation, had moved on to Moscow. In 2000 Verevkin-Rakhalsky was appointed deputy minister for taxes and duties, and in 2001 he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant general and senior deputy director of the Federal Service of Tax Police.
The rapid career advancement by the counterintelligence officers from Vladivostok was noted by colleagues in other regions. Soon, spy hunts were being mounted across the country, even in the calmest regions. In January 2002 the Penza FSB department made a name for itself by unmasking a 22-year-old spy who had ostensibly recruited a 16-year-old boy. It later turned out that the supposed spy was an English teacher who had asked a student to bring in his father’s photographs of the Baikanur Space Center (the Soviet analogue of Cape Canaveral). The FSB claimed that the teacher was planning to sell the photographs to the U.S. embassy.
19
IF THERE WAS a single case that led the investigators from the “spy section” of the FSB Investigative Directorate in Moscow to reorient their hunt for spies, it was that of Valentin Moiseev. Moiseev, former deputy director of the First Foreign Ministry Department for Asian countries, was arrested on July 4, 1998, and accused of passing secret documents to the South Korean intelligence service.