14 DAY TRIAL // Three Russian nationals have been charged by the FBI for espionage activity for the period they stayed in the United States; one of them has been arrested, while the other two are no longer on US territory.
Evegeny Buryakov, also known as “Zhenya,” Igor Sporyshev and Vicror Podobnyy were charged on Monday in connection to Buryakov’s service as a covert intelligence agent of the Russian Federation.
According to the complaint unsealed in Manhattan federal court, Buryakov worked in the United States as an agent of Russia’s foreign intelligence service (SVR) under non-official cover (NOC). This means that he entered and remained in the country as a private individual – he was posing as an employee in the Manhattan office of a Russian bank.
Basically, a NOC benefits from no support from their government; if caught, they are completely on their own.
NOCs are generally the subject of less scrutiny
According to federal law, agents of a foreign country cannot exercise their duty without informing the US Attorney General first. “Department of Justice records indicate that Buryakov has never notified the United States Attorney General that he is, in fact, an agent of Russia,” says a statement from the FBI, released on Monday.
In the case of Sporyshev and Podobnyy, things are different because they were under official cover, the former having served as a Trade Representative of the Russian Federation in New York from November 22, 2010, until November 21, 2014; the latter also held an official cover from December 13, 2012, until September 12, 2013, as an Attaché to the Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations.
They benefited from diplomatic immunity and were also exempt from notifying the US Attorney General about the true nature of their work.
On the other hand, none of them had the right to help Buryakov in his work as an unregistered agent of Russia carrying out his operation in the US, the Department of Justice says.
“SVR agents operating under such non-official cover—sometimes referred to as ‘NOCs’—typically are subject to less scrutiny by the host government, and, in many cases, are never identified as intelligence agents by the host government. As a result, a NOC is an extremely valuable intelligence asset for the SVR,” the FBI said.
Typical spy behavior caught on tape by the FBI
It appears that the trio’s task was to recruit New York City residents as intelligence sources for Russia, gathering information and sending it to the SVR headquarters.
Since Buryakov was a NOC and could not blow his cover, he could not enter the premises of the SVR office in New York and all data he gathered was delivered to Sporyshev or Podobnyy after exchanging coded messages informing of a package (hat, umbrella, ticket, book) that needed to be returned.
The activity of the three was caught by the FBI during physical and electronic surveillance, which captured them in more than 48 meetings, where Buryakov would pass “a bag, magazine, or slip of paper to Sporyshev.”
The FBI says that it recorded conversations between Sporyshev and Podobnyy about recruiting New York residents. Some of the individuals targeted were employees of major companies, as well as young women connected to a university in New York.
All three spies are currently charged with conspiracy to help Buryakov act as a Russian agent without notifying the US Attorney General; the maximum penalty for this is five years in jail. They also face 10 years in prison for acting as an agent (Buryakov) without notifying the US government representatives and for aiding and abetting this offense (Sporyshev and Podobnyy).