New York (AFP) – A Russian banker was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison on Wednesday after pleading guilty to conspiracy in what US prosecutors called a Cold War-style spy ring in New York.
Evgeny Buryakov, 41, stood motionless in navy jail scrubs and a brown T-shirt in a Manhattan federal court as Judge Richard Berman sentenced him to 30 months in prison and a $10,000 fine.
The married father of two, with short brown hair and dark-rimmed spectacles who used to earn $204,000 a year, waived his right to address the court.
Arrested in January 2015, he has already served around half his sentence and is to be deported following his release.
His was the first such espionage case since 10 deep-cover agents, including Anna Chapman, were arrested in the New York area in 2010. They pleaded guilty and were part of a prisoner swap with Moscow.
The murky case, which included the FBI planting covert recording devices hidden in binders, was akin to “a plotline for a Cold War-era movie,” chief US prosecutor for Manhattan, Preet Bharara, has said.
The US government says Buryakov worked for Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence agency while posing as an employee for Russian bank Vnesheconombank in Manhattan, and previously in South Africa.
He pled guilty in March to one count of conspiring to act as an unregistered foreign agent working on behalf of the Russian Federation.
Prosecutors insist he was an SVR agent but that more serious charge was dropped in his plea deal. He has expressed no remorse, they said.
The defense told the court Wednesday that there were “no factual disputes that need to be resolved.”
– Not James Bond –
Prosecutors said the FBI eavesdropped on SVR agents for months with the help of tiny recorders planted in binders of alleged trade secrets handed over by an undercover agent posing as an energy analyst.
The bugs allowed the FBI to listen as Russian spies received tasks from Moscow and fed information back to the SVR from January to May 2013, US prosecutors say.
They also allegedly heard the Russians complain about the humdrum nature of their work, far removed from the adventures of James Bond.
Buryakov was accused of working with a trade mission official and another Russian attached to the UN mission in New York who are no longer in the United States.
Fluent in English, Buryakov waived the right to an interpreter and Berman noted a letter from his parents who praised their “wonderful son” and remarked on his gift for foreign languages.
The defendant at one point smiled gently as the judge declined to pronounce the name of his bank, but instead spelled it out.
His two children had also wrote a letter in English requesting their father “to come home soon,” the judge said.
His mother, who had been living in Tunisia with her husband who works for the Russian embassy, has moved home to care for them because their mother, an attorney, is working full-time, he added.
The sentence of two-and-a-half years had been agreed upon by both US government prosecutors and the defense ahead of Wednesday’s sentencing.
Berman recommended that Buryakov serve the remainder of his sentence at Fort Dix, a low-security jail in New Jersey.
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