Sergei Skvortsov, a Russian-Swedish man in his 60s, began appearing in a Stockholm court on Monday on suspicion of passing Western technology for nearly a decade to Russian military intelligence.
Dressed in blue jeans, a shirt and a gray jacket, Skvortsov must answer the charge of “illegal intelligence activities” against Sweden and the United States, after a police investigation Swedish campaign conducted with the help of the American FBI.
He moved to Sweden with his wife in the 1990s, and allegedly used electronic component import-export companies he ran for his spy activities.
His companies served as a platform for “the Russian military intelligence service GRU and part of the Russian state system” to illegally transfer Western technologies to them, prosecutor Henrik Olin told the court.
According to experts quoted by the Swedish media, such technologies could be used in particular for research on nuclear weapons.
The trial comes amid heightened national security concerns by Swedish authorities, months after a former Swedish intelligence agent was convicted of aggravated espionage for Russia.
Skvortsov, in custody since his arrest in November 2022, faces up to four years in prison.
“He is not guilty of any charges brought by the prosecutor,” his lawyer, Ulrika Borg, told the judges.
The trial is scheduled to last until September 25 but will be partly held behind closed doors for national security reasons.
For the prosecutor, Skvortsov has put himself at the service of a well-established state system.
“It is a system of illegal acquisition of technologies, an organization that dates back to Soviet times. It requires agents, relays all over the world that allow the supply of the military industry”, has said Henrik Olin.
“Sergei Skvortsov was one of his relays in a global network,” he added.
The man was arrested on November 22, 2022 at dawn in his house in an upscale suburb of Stockholm during a spectacular operation by police commando units that mobilized two helicopters.
He reportedly spied on the United States since January 1, 2013 and Sweden since July 1, 2014, until his arrest.
“He posed a serious risk to national security interests, both in Sweden and in the United States,” prosecutor Henrik Olin told AFP before his trial.
“You only have to look at the battlefield in Ukraine to see that the Russian military-industrial complex needs this,” he added.
-American branch?-
In 2016, American justice arrested and tried, mainly in New York, people who supplied the Russian military system with electronic devices.
“The analysis of the American authorities is that the defendant took over from them,” Mr. Olin said before the trial.
Swedish investigators found emails from the Russian Ministry of Defense sent to Skvortsov and seized computers, hard drives, USB keys and mobile phones from his home, listed among the 81 exhibits disclosed in the indictment .
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said in July that his country had to face “the most serious security situation since the Second World War”.
“Countries and state actors could take advantage of the situation,” he said. The Swedish Minister of Justice considered that Russia, along with Iran and China, were among the threats.
The trial comes shortly after the conclusion of another spectacular case of espionage for the benefit of Russia.
Swedish justice sentenced in January to life imprisonment a former Swedish intelligence agent, found with his brother guilty of “aggravated espionage”.
04/09/2023 12:17:15 – Stockholm (AFP) © 2023 AFP
