New York (AFP) - Federal agents on Monday arrested an alleged Russian spy in New York accused of trying to recruit sources and collect economic intelligence while working as a Manhattan banker, officials said. US prosecutors named the alleged covert intelligence agent as Evgeny Buryakov, 39. He appeared before Judge Sarah Netburn in a Manhattan federal court on Monday, a court official said. Prosecutors said he was assisted in covert espionage by Russian spies Igor Sporyshev, 40, and Victor Podobnyy, 27, who had been attached to the Russian trade and UN missions in New York. Sporyshev and Podobnyy were protected by diplomatic immunity and have since left the United States, so have not been arrested. They are charged in absentia, officials said. Buryakov's detention is likely to rock already deeply strained relations between Moscow and Washington, which have been at their lowest ebb in years over the crisis in Ukraine and war in Syria. US prosecutors allege Buryakov started working as an undercover agent for Moscow's SVR foreign intelligence agency in New York in 2012 while posing as a banker at a Russian bank in Manhattan. It is the first such case since 10 deep-cover agents including Anna Chapman, were arrested in the New York area in 2010. They pled guilty and were part of a prisoner swap with Moscow. - Russian spies 'in our midst' - The FBI said it opened the investigation into the alleged spy ring within months of those guilty pleas. View gallery US Attorney General Eric Holder at the Department of Justice in Washington, DC, on September 4, 2014 … Attorney General Eric Holder said America was committed "to combating attempts by covert agents to illegally gather intelligence and recruit spies within the United States." Manhattan Attorney Preet Bharara said it showed that "more than two decades" after the Cold War, "Russian spies continue to seek to operate in our midst under cover of secrecy." The trio allegedly communicated through code to arrange meetings and swap intelligence, generally outdoors and in person to avoid electronic interception, US officials said. In the FBI indictment, the alleged spies who worked for SVR's economic division complain that the humdrum nature of their work is rather removed from the adventure of James Bond films. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said Buryakov and Sporyshev were under their surveillance as early as March 2012. From then until mid-September 2014, FBI observed dozens of meetings in which Buryakov passed a bag, magazine, or slip of paper to Sporyshev at meetings set up by a short telephone call. Prosecutors said they were recorded attempting to recruit US residents, including consultants working for major companies and several young women with ties to a New York university. - Russian state-owned media link - In 2013, Sporyshev asked Buryakov for help in asking questions to be used for intelligence gathering by others associated with "a leading Russian state-owned news organization," prosecutors said. Officials said the net closed on Buryakov after he met numerous times last summer with an FBI source posing as the representative of a wealthy investor looking to develop casinos in Russia. The trio are charged with conspiring for Buryakov to act as an undeclared foreign agent. Buryakov is also charged with acting as an undeclared foreign spy, and the other two with aiding and abetting that offense. The charges against Buryakov are punishable by 15 years in prison. It is illegal in the Untied States for foreign spies to operate undeclared. Sporyshev was Russia's trade representative in New York from November 2010 to November 2014. Podobnyy worked at the Russian mission to the United Nations from December 2012, to September 2013. While both were exempt from declaring their espionage activities, they were not allowed to conspire, aid or abet Buryakov with his work, US prosecutors said. http://news.yahoo.com/fbi-arrests-alleged-russian-spy-york-195404045.html
I feel bad for whoever is going to take the retaliatory arrest in Moscow or St Petersburg over the next few days. They'll find somebody to lock up so they have fresh trade bait.
There's still one of those yellow and black fallout shelter signs on a building in my old neighborhood. It's faded and worn but it's still there. I saw it driving by and it took me back to my childhood in the 60's when those suckers were on every major building. You had one on every block. Sometime in the early 70's a few friends and I wound up in the tunnels that connected a few of the buildings at an intersection. Was pretty cool stuff. Lots of water barrels and the like. We went into the network on 159th street and got all the way to 161st before we emerged.
Yeah, but today who cares? The Russians aren't the problem. Neither are the Chinese or the Arabs. We're the problem. When your own government is spying on you at the level the US government is spying on us it doesn't really matter who else is spying also. You're already screwed. The only government in the world that really scares me these days is the North Koreans and that's only because they could actually believe that wiping out human civilization and surviving themselves is possible. It's not that hard to pull 23 million sets of teeth in the zombie apocalypse.
I notice a lot of them throughout Brooklyn. Off the top of my head all up and down ocean ave and flatbush. I had to google one day on what it meant. In my college there's even a giant locked room with that faded sign on it. Sent from my LG-LS720 using Tapatalk
A lot of the buildings in my old neighborhood got gentrified in the 90's. I'm thinking the new co-op boards went around and took down the old signs. Now that I think about it I'm wondering if it's still a legal requirement to post them? The regulations on them probably got thrown out in the early 90's but you never know. Co-op boards will do very stupid things when the amateur realtors get on the board and try to drive up apartment prices in the building.
Ironic. I just rewatched WWZ tonight. Maybe it's scary to you but I don't have shady stuff going on so I'm not worried.
US arrests and well publicises arrest of a political adversary, don't forget to talk about it at the water cooler. Is there really any news here?
Washington Heights but same basic construction. Both areas were developed at the same time from 1890 to 1930 or so.
It's not about shady stuff. It's about what the next government might consider shady. The Weimar Republic was followed by the Third Reich. The Founding Fathers would be horrified by what has happened in this country since 9/11. I'd run the old Ben Franklin Freedom - Security quote at you but you've probably heard it before.
Because having the world's most powerful country repeatedly invading you bent on your utter destruction was better than the times we live in now? Grow up.
I also have my doubts that the Founding Fathers would have meddled enough in the affairs of others to create a resistance group to the Soviets that would turn their backs on us either. I agree, Adams and Jefferson would be considered traitors to this nation with their thoughts on freedoms
That's the ironic thing about the current Tea Party and the Conservative wing of the Republican party. The Founding Fathers were radicals and the current Tea Party and conservatives would be the most ardent of Tories.
The Tea Party was a very expensive distraction that the Republicans needed to get by the disasters of the early 00's. They used Citizens United to it's full effect in funding hundreds of small political insurgencies that moved the public viewpoint from the disastrous Neo-con regime, giving what remained of the Republican mainstream time to regroup. However the distraction nearly snuffed them and might still do so. Can't ignite small revolutionary groups all over the place and then smoothly bring them back under control. The funds that empowered them have been largely rescinded but they're still out there in their caves waiting to strike, just like Al-Qaida was after the CIA pulled funding on them.
