Moscow: Russia has sentenced a former policeman to 13 years in prison on high treason charges, accusing him of spying for the CIA, the security service said today.
The Moscow District Court today convicted a former employee of the interior ministry’s Moscow region branch, Yevgeny Chistov, of high treason and sentenced him to 13 years in a high-security prison, the FSB security service said in a statement.
“It was established that in 2011, when he served at the Russian interior ministry, EA Chistov established contact with US Central Intelligence Agency, acting on his own initiative and out of self interest,” the security service said in a statement.
For monetary reward, he collected and passed to the United States work-related information including state secrets for a period of three years, the statement said.
The former policeman pleaded guilty and confirmed that he had been recruited by the CIA and passed state secrets to a foreign intelligence agency, the FSB said.
Since the start of the Ukraine crisis in 2014, numerous people in Russia have been charged with high treason, espionage or disclosing state secrets.
Last month, a court said it had sentenced a man to 12 years in prison for allegedly spying for Ukraine.
In September, Moscow jailed a former military intelligence engineer for 14 years for allegedly passing on state secrets by sending his resume to a Swedish organisation.