The Spanish journalist of Russian origin Pablo González, who has been detained in Poland since February 2022 on suspicion of espionage, collected information for years about the environment of people from the Russian opposition abroad such as Zanna Nemtsova, a dissident and daughter of the murdered Russian opposition member. in 2015 Boris Nemtsov. On Pablo González’s cell phone, the Polish authorities found information about Nemtsova and about her Boris Nemtsov foundation.
The Russian media Agentstvo has obtained this information through two sources. González met Zhanna Nemtsova in 2016 in Brussels. They became friends and the Spaniard, who has worked his entire career for the Basque outlet Gara, began to be invited to the entity’s events.
Olga Shorina, co-founder of the Nemtsov Foundation, confirmed this Tuesday to EL MUNDO that they met Pablo González and that at first they did not suspect him, “although later it did seem strange to us that he made so many trips working for a small Basque newspaper.” Despite having political ideas that were not very favorable to the Russian opposition, González became a regular at the events of that foundation, which was highly critical of the Vladimir Putin regime.
According to a source from the Boris Nemtsov Foundation, on Pablo’s computer and mobile phone – which was copied by the Ukrainian security services in 2022 during an interrogation and which was later reviewed by Polish investigators – there are reports about people he met through the Nemtsov Foundation, including lawyer Ilya Novikov and prominent opposition figure Vladimir Kara-Murza, currently imprisoned in Russia. Agentstvo is unclear to whom these reports were directed, but they do not appear to be journalistic materials. Two sources have told this Russian outlet that Pablo González was probably an infiltrated agent of the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU, Russia’s military espionage service) in Zhanna Nemtsova’s environment.
The seized documents reveal that his work was methodical. Each report typically consisted of three parts: a description of the contacts made, an estimate of the expenses incurred, and an outlook on plans for the future. Investigators have also found letters from Boris Nemtsov in the files confiscated from the journalist, documents allegedly copied from Nemtsova’s laptop. Due to this discovery, González faces another accusation: illegal access to private information.
Nemtsova did not want to answer questions from the media, claiming that she has a confidentiality agreement with the Polish authorities. According to a source from the Boris Nemtsov Foundation, González described in her reports in detail the activities of Nemtsova and her friends, employees and partners of the foundation, as well as students of the summer journalism school, in which she He participated. This was learned after analyzing the digital media of the Spanish journalist, to which the special Polish documents had access. The source does not know to whom González’s messages were addressed, but they are written as reports for his bosses in the Intelligence services.
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