A court in Moscow, Russia, sentenced a United States citizen this Tuesday (24) to 15 years in prison for espionage, according to the state 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 bribery, according to Russian state media.
The independent Russian channel Media Zona, which had a journalist inside the courtroom, reported that Spector was sentenced to 13 years in a maximum security penal colony on espionage charges.
The previous bribery charge was added to this term, resulting in a 15-year sentence, it reported, adding that Spector was also fined 14,116,805 rubles (about $140,500).
In 2020, Gene Spector pleaded guilty to mediating bribes for Anastasia Alekseyeva, a former aide to former Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich, state news agency TASS reported.
Before that, Spector was chairman of the board of directors of the Medpolymerprom Group, which specializes in cancer medicines, according to TASS.
A US official at the American embassy in Moscow told CNN in August 2023, when Spector was accused of espionage, which they believed the American citizen was already in prison and added that they had no information about a new accusation.
US citizens receive sentences in Russia
Spector is one of many American citizens who have been sentenced to long terms in Russian prisons this year.
In October, 72-year-old Michigan native Stephen Hubbard was sentenced to nearly seven years in prison for allegedly fighting as a mercenary for Ukraine, according to TASS.
Robert Woodland, an American citizen of Russian origin, was sentenced to 12 years and six months in a maximum security penal colony in July on drug charges.
In the same month, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was sentenced to 16 years in prison after being accused of spying for the CIA, the US intelligence agency, while working in the city of Yekaterinburg in March 2023.
He was later freed in a historic prisoner exchange between Russia and the West in August.
*Radina Gigova, Matthew Chance and Katharina Krebs, from CNN, contributed to this report
This content was originally published in Russia sentences US citizen to 15 years in prison for espionage, says agency on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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