Status: 4/4/2023 5:21 p.m
The US reporter Gershkovich, who is in custody in Russia, might be a bargaining chip for the exchange of Russian prisoners. The Foreign Office also warns Germans once morest arrests. Who might Russia want to bring back?
It is the first time since the end of the Cold War that a US journalist has been jailed for espionage in Russia. Evan Gershkovich faces 20 years in prison. In the vast majority of cases, the accused are also convicted in Russia.
The FSB secret service claims to have “caught the 31-year-old in the act” in Yekaterinburg collecting state secret information regarding a company belonging to the military-industrial complex. His newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, and the US government have rejected this and are calling for his release.
There are fears that Gershkovich is a “hostage” to be used by the US government to exchange Russian prisoners. This was already assumed for the US basketball player Brittney Griner. She was sentenced to nine years in prison for a small amount of hash oil that she had in her luggage upon arrival at one of Moscow’s airports in February 2022. She had already been transferred to a prison camp in Mordovia before being exchanged for convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout in December.
Risk also for Germans in Russia
During the negotiations, the Russian side, via a channel used by the FSB to Washington, brought up the man convicted of the “Tiergarten murder,” who is serving his life sentence in Germany. Specialists like the Russian secret service expert Andrei soldatov had explained this as a signal to Russian agents in the west that they would not be abandoned. US government officials said the proposal was never meant to be taken seriously.
It might also have been aimed at stoking tensions between the USA and Germany. In legal and political circles in Germany there was no sign of a willingness to exchange the convicted murderer with Russia, where freedom would surely have awaited him less than a year following his conviction. Bout was celebrated on his return to Russia.
As early as August 2022, politicians in Berlin warned of the risk for Germans too of being arrested in Russia and used as a bargaining chip. The Federal Foreign Office advises once morest traveling there: “In the Russian Federation, there is also a risk of arbitrary arrest for German nationals and German-Russian dual nationals,” says the ministry’s website. Among other things, reference is made to new censorship laws that have come into force since the attack on Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
What regarding Gershkovich?
The Russian leadership made it clear that they see no hurry with Gershkovich. A court should decide his fate, said Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. His deputy, Sergey Ryabkov, went one step further: it was too early to discuss an exchange. Other people were only replaced following they had already served a sentence.
Possibly the Russian government wants to push up the price for a cheap exchange. The US Department of Justice refused to answer the Wall Street Journal how many Russian citizens are currently in US custody. But some names are familiar.
credit card fraud
In April 2017, Roman Selesnew was sentenced to 27 years in prison for hacking in Seattle. He received the extraordinarily long prison sentence because, according to prosecutors, he was “one of the most prolific credit card thieves in history”.
He is said to have stolen and sold millions of credit card numbers. The damage was more than 170 million US dollars, but might actually have been several billion US dollars, the New York Times wrote at the time. Selesnev’s father is a Duma deputy for the nationalist LDPR party.
Laundered criminal proceeds
In early August 2022, Alexander Vinnik was extradited from Greece to the United States. According to the US Department of Justice, he is to be held responsible for the operation of the cryptocurrency exchange BTC-e. More than four billion US dollars in criminal proceeds are said to have been laundered via the stock exchange.
Vinnik was transferred from Greece following five years of litigation. According to the Wall Street Journal, his lawyer Frédéric Bélot is committed to replacing his client.
hackers and scammers
In mid-February, a 42-year-old businessman with ties to the Kremlin, Vladislav Klyushin, was convicted by a Boston court. He stole data from computer networks and used them profitably. Insider trading brought in $90 million.
Klyushin was arrested in Switzerland in 2021 when he tried to transfer from his private jet to a helicopter that was supposed to take him to a ski resort.
Along with Klyushin, two other Russians were charged in absentia. Two other Russians were also charged in absentia in a separate trial. One of the group is said to have been involved in the interference in the 2016 US presidential election as an officer with the GRU military intelligence agency.
court as a spy target
Shortly before Gershkovich’s arrest, 37-year-old Russian Sergey Cherkassov was indicted in a Washington court. The main allegation once morest the 37-year-old is that he acted as an agent of a foreign power, using a bogus Brazilian identity under the alias Victor Muller Ferreira. His resume indicated that he earned a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in 2020.
The Dutch secret service AIVD exposed Cherkassov in June 2022 when he wanted to do an internship at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. He was not allowed to enter the country and had to fly to Brazil. He is in prison there for fraud.
underground agents
Cherkassov is just one of several suspected agents who have been exposed in recent months and who have used South American citizenship as a legend. In October 2022, the Norwegian secret service PST exposed a Russian with Brazilian citizenship. Under the name of José Assis Giammaria, he had built up an academic career in Canada before going to a university in Tromsø, northern Norway. He was arrested.
In December, a couple named Maria Myer and Ludwig Gisch was caught in Slovenia. They pretended to have come from Argentina in 2017. A large amount of cash was found on them. Investigators therefore assume that they were responsible for handing out money to informal agents and informants, wrote the British “Guardian”.
So they might have been part of a network in Europe. While a court case once morest her is being prepared, negotiations for her replacement are said to be running in the background. The recent disappearance of a couple from Greece might be an indication that the Russian secret services fear more agents will be busted. At the beginning of the 2010s, a defector had contributed to a spy ring with eleven people in the USA and then a married couple in Germany, who were eventually exchanged.
“Wrongly Imprisoned”
Gershkovich, once more, is not the only one the US is seeking to release. During the negotiations for Griner, it was already regarding Paul Whelan. The former US Marine was sentenced to 16 years in prison for espionage in 2020. In the US, he was classified as “wrongly imprisoned”. For those detained abroad with this status, there is a special representative and the possibility to use additional resources for their release.
Not yet covered by this status is teacher Marc Fogel, who, like Griner, was convicted of possession of cannabis that he brought to Russia for medicinal purposes. The US State Department is requesting his release on humanitarian grounds.
In addition, the release of Russian nationals who had spied for the USA or other countries, for example, was obtained in the past. Russian dissidents were also released. Now, for example, the opposition Vladimir Kara-Murza might be considered. He had long commuted between the US and Russia before being arrested in Moscow in April 2022. Criminal proceedings were opened once morest him for “false statements regarding the Russian army” because of a speech before the House of Representatives in the US state of Arizona.
