US citizen sentenced to 15 years by Moscow court on espionage charges, Russian media says
An American citizen, Evgeny "Eugene" Spector, was sentenced to 15 years in a high-security prison by the Moscow City Court on espionage charges on Dec. 24, reported Interfax, a Russian news agency.
The Russian Security Service, or FSB, said Spector collected information from Russia "in the interests of the Pentagon to create a system for genetic screening of the Russian population," Interfax reported on Friday.
"We are aware of reports of the sentencing of a U.S. citizen in Russia. We are monitoring the situation but have no further comment at this time," a State Department official told ABC News. "The Department of State has no higher priority than the safety and security of our U.S. citizens overseas. We will continue to press for fair and transparent treatment for all U.S. citizen detainees in Russia and around the world."
The Pentagon declined to comment, instead directing all inquiries to the State Department.
"The American, acting in the interests of the Pentagon and a commercial organization affiliated with it, collected and transferred to a foreign party various information on biotechnological and biomedical topics, including information constituting a state secret, for the subsequent creation by the United States of a high-speed genetic screening system for the Russian population," the FSB said Friday, according to Interfax.
The sentence has not entered into force and can be appealed, Interfax reported. The court did not report how Spector pleaded to the charges. It was a closed-door trial "due to the secrecy of the case materials," Russian state media said.
Before espionage charges were brought against Spector in August 2023, he was arrested in a case involving bribes to the former assistant to Arkady Dvorkovich, the former deputy prime minister of the Russian Federation, according to Interfax.
Spector was sentenced 3 1/2 years in a maximum-security penal colony for acting as an intermediary in giving a bribe to Dvorkovich's aide.
The sentence of espionage charges was handed down in conjunction with the previous sentence Spector had already received for the bribery charges, Russian state media said. Spector was handed a 13-year sentence for espionage charges, which added to his existing bribery sentence, converting the overall sentence into a new 15-year sentence, Russian state media reported.
The presiding judge had decided Spector should now serve an overall 15-year sentence in a maximum-security penal colony as punishment for both cases on Tuesday, reported TASS, a Russian state news agency.
Prior to his arrest, Spector was the chairman of the board of directors of the Medpolymerprom Group, a company specializing in cancer-curing drugs. Spector was born in Russia and then moved to the US.
On Friday, the U.S. State Department confirmed to ABC News another American serving a prison sentence in Russia was determined to be "wrongfully detained" by Secretary of State Antony Blinken earlier this year.
Marc Fogel, an American teacher who was arrested in Russia on drug charges in 2021, is currently serving a 14-year sentence.
A State Department spokesperson said the U.S. has been trying to secure Fogel's release and tried to include him in the large Aug. 1 prisoner exchange that freed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, among others.
Blinken determined Fogel as being wrongfully detained in October, the spokesperson said, adding that there was a variety of reasons why the department may not have made the designation public.
ABC News' Nathan Luna contributed to this report.
