American convicted of collecting data for genetic screening system for Russians

A US citizen was sentenced for collecting data for the Pentagon for the system of genetic screening of Russian residents. This was reported by the Public Relations Center (PRC) of the FSB on December 27.

It is specified that Evgeny Spektor collected and transferred to a foreign party information on biotechnological and biomedical topics, including those constituting state secrets, for the subsequent creation of the U.S. system of high-speed genetic screening of the Russian population.

"The criminal activity of E.M. Spector has been fully proved," the agency said in a statement.

The man was found guilty under Article 276 of the Criminal Code of Russia ("Espionage"). The court sentenced the American to 15 years in prison. He will serve his sentence in a strict regime colony. He was also appointed a fine of 14,116,805 rubles 55 kopecks.

Earlier, on December 24, Moscow City Court sentenced Spector, accused of espionage, to 15 years in prison. The details of the case were unknown at the time.

Spector was arrested in a criminal espionage case in August 2023. Earlier, in June 2021, he was found guilty of mediation in giving a bribe on a particularly large scale (part 3 of Article 291.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) to Anastasia Alexeeva, an ex-assistant to former Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich. Then the court sentenced him to four years in a penal colony. The American admitted his guilt.

The investigation believes that Alexeyeva in the period from 2015 to 2016 as an assistant to Dvorkovich received a bribe in the form of trips to Thailand for the New Year holidays in 2016 and to the Dominican Republic - for the May holidays. Both tours cost 2 million rubles each.