CNN
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A Moscow court on Tuesday sentenced an American to 15 years in prison for espionage, state news agency RIA Novosti reported.
Gene Spector, who was born in Russia and later immigrated to the United States and obtained citizenship, was previously sentenced to four years in prison in Russia for brokering bribes, Russian state media reported.
Russia’s independent media outlet Media Zona invited journalists to the courtroom and reported that Spector was sentenced to 13 years in a maximum-security penal colony on charges of espionage. Spector’s previous bribery charges were added to the current term, resulting in a 15-year prison sentence, the newspaper said, adding that Spector was also fined 14,116,805 rubles (about $140,500).
Spector pleaded guilty in 2020 to brokering a bribe to Anastasia Alexeyeva, a former close aide of former Russian deputy prime minister Arkady Dvorkovich, state news agency TASS reported.
Spector previously served as chairman of the board of anti-cancer drug specialist Medpolymerprom Group, TASS reported.
A U.S. official at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow told CNN in August 2023, when Specter was indicted on espionage charges, that he believed the American was already in prison and that no information about the new charges was available. He added that there was no.
Spector is one of a number of Americans sentenced to long terms in Russian prisons this year.
In October, Stephen Hubbard, 72, from Michigan, was sentenced to nearly seven years in prison for fighting as a mercenary for Ukraine, TASS reported.
Robert Woodland, a Russian-American national, was sentenced in July to 12 years and six months in a high-security penal colony on drug-related charges.
That same month, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was sentenced to 16 years in prison after being accused of spying for the CIA while working in Yekaterinburg in March 2023. He was later released in a historic prisoner exchange between Russia and the West. In August.
