The FBI has arrested 39-year-old banker Evgeny Buryakov and charged two other Russians who are no longer in the country as spies, accusing them of violating a law requiring foreign spies to register as agents of a foreign power.
Interestingly enough, the other two men: trade representative Igor Sporyshev and UN mission attache Victor Podobnyy, were both registered as agents of a foreign power, the Russian Federation, but were charged for associating with Buryakov, who was not registered.
The court complaint against the three details two and a half years of what can charitably be called espionage, but which seems to have amounted to a few dozen lunch meetings and a single trip to Atlantic City.
In 2013, Sporyshev and Buryakov had a phone call discussing the sort of question that would be interesting to ask on a Russian state-owned news network (presumably RT) for intelligence gathering purposes. They ended up asking about exchange-traded funds and how interested investors on the New York Stock Exchange might be in Russian securities.
On March 28 of 2014, the FBI physically broke into Buryakov’s office and searched his computer. They found he’d recently googled “sanctions Russia impact.”
The supreme “get” of the entire operation was a single unclassified Treasury Department memo which was a list of Russian banks to be targeted in future sanctions. The list was given to Buryakov during his Atlantic City visit to an unnamed casino.
While I have no doubt the Kremlin is pleased to no end by the work of the author of this article something tells me they're not so pleased by the work of the FBI.
Unregistered Israeli agents should be getting the same… if your going to be running that sort of thing at all.
First thought on seeing this was it's basically harassment for propaganda purposes–now that we're supposed to be seeing Russia as antagonistic.
They failed to register as agents of a foreign power? Has the FBI ever heard of neocons, israeli dual citizens, certain Hollywood producers, the list could go on for pages…?
Another propaganda trial — And what does the international community say?
“Such hypocrisy, and by a government so seeped in evil that it ordered Israel to assassinate over a dozen nuclear scientists in Iran.”
Interesting that Mr Ditz "presumes" that the TV station concerned is RT. I presume therefore that he regards RT as a mere instrument for extracting intelligence from its (almost entirely American) guests. That hardly suggests that RT has any credibility as a source of news.
Nor does ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, FOX, ETC…
All the US-funded NGOs in Russia looking to promote regime change should also be registered as agents of a foreign power, along with anyone who takes their money and any locals who work for them.
Could it be a game of forcing some reciprocity? One way that could work out is media here flails over just how 'draconian' the Russian 'persecution' of US spies is… while ignoring how petty recent cases were here.
Obviously this has been hyped to keep the anti-Putin hysteria going. Why is Obama trying to head off war with Iran while daring it against Russia? Is it because Putin made him look so foolish on the chemical weapons false flag near bombing of Damascus? In any case, it may take a whole team of psychiatrists to figure out Obama's schizophrenic brain.
One of these days US hypocrisy will bite the US in the butt
The Russians are coming,the Russians are coming!