Russia sentences US citizen to 15 years in prison for espionage
By Catherine Nicholls and Darya Tarasova, CNN
(CNN) — A Moscow court has on Tuesday sentenced a US citizen to 15 years in prison for espionage, according to state-run news agency RIA Novosti.
Gene Spector, who was born in Russia but later moved to the United States and received citizenship, had previously been sentenced to four years in prison in Russia for acting as an intermediary in a bribe, Russian state media said.
Independent Russian outlet Media Zona, who had a journalist inside the courtroom, reported that Spector was sentenced to 13 years in a maximum security penal colony on espionage charges. His previous charge for bribery was added to this term, meaning he was handed down a 15-year sentence, it reported, adding that Spector was also fined 14,116,805 rubles (around $140,500).
In 2020, Spector pled guilty to mediating bribes for Anastasia Alekseyeva, a previous aide to former Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich, state news agency TASS reported.
Before this, Spector was the chairman of the board of directors of Medpolymerprom Group, specializing in cancer drugs, according to TASS.
A US official at the American embassy in Moscow told CNN in August 2023, when Spector was charged with espionage, that they believed that the US citizen was already in jail and added that they had no information on a new charge.
Spector is one of a host of US citizens who have been sentenced to lengthy terms in Russian prisons this year.
In October, 72-year-old Stephen Hubbard, originally from Michigan, was sentenced to almost seven years in prison for allegedly fighting as a mercenary for Ukraine, according to TASS.
Robert Woodland, a US citizen of Russian origin, was sentenced to 12 years and six months in a maximum-security penal colony in July for drug-related charges.
The same month, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was sentenced to 16 years in prison after being accused of spying for the CIA while working in the city of Yekaterinburg in March 2023. He was later released in a historic prisoner swap between Russia and the West in August.
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CNN’s Radina Gigova, Matthew Chance and Katharina Krebs contributed to this report.
