A Swedish prosecutor has filed charges against a man accused of transferring technology and equipment to Russia on behalf of its military intelligence.
(Bloomberg) — A Swedish prosecutor has filed charges against a man accused of transferring technology and equipment to Russia on behalf of its military intelligence.
The 60-year-old, who was arrested in November when special forces swooped in on his house in a sleepy Stockholm suburb, acted as a node in a network set up to transfer goods to Russia’s military-industrial complex, according to prosecutor Henrik Olin. He faces up to six years in prison, if found guilty.
“Russia has a need to procure Western technology, mainly electronics, as they don’t have those capabilities themselves, and there is a system for this that goes back to Soviet times,” Olin said at a news conference in Stockholm on Monday. “The suspect has been part of this system.”
The man, who ran businesses in Sweden with his wife, was working on behalf of the GRU military intelligence unit to transfer equipment including electronics, ship engines and cranes to Russia, using fake identities and concealing end users, according to the charges. The couple moved to Sweden from Russia in the late 1990s.
The investigation was conducted in cooperation with the FBI and the alleged crimes involved procurements of products from the US, Sweden, other Western countries and Asia, according to Olin.
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