The same day, a Russian military intelligence (GRU)
colonel, Aleksander Sipachev, was sentenced in Moscow
to eight years in prison and stripped of his rank.
According to Russian news agencies, he was convicted of
attempting to sell secret documents to the CIA. Russian
secret service personnel, idled by the withering of Russia's
global presence, resort to private business or are re-
deployed by the state to spy on industrial and economic
secrets in order to aid budding Russian multinationals.
According to the FBI and the National White-collar Crime
Center, Russian former secret agents have teamed with
computer hackers to break into corporate networks to steal
vital information about product development and
marketing strategies. Microsoft has admitted to such a
compromising intrusion.
In a December 1999 interview to Segodnya, a Russia
paper, Eyer Winkler, a former high-ranking staffer with
the National Security Agency (NSA) confirmed that
"corruption in the Russian Government, the Foreign
Intelligence Service, and the Main Intelligence
Department allows Russian organized criminal groups to
use these departments in their own interests. Criminals
receive the major part of information collected by the
Russian special services by means of breaking into
American computer networks".
When the KGB was dismantled and replaced by a host of
new acronyms, Russian industrial espionage was still in
diapers. as a result, it is a bureaucratic no-man's land
roamed by agents of the GRU, the Foreign Intelligence
Service (SVR), and smaller outfits, such as the Federal
Agency on Government Communications and Information
(FAPSI).
According to Stratfor, the strategic forecasting
consultancy, "the SVR and GRU both handle manned
intelligence on U.S. territory, with the Russian Federal
Security Service (FSB) doing counterintelligence in
America. Also, both the SVR and GRU have internal
counterintelligence units created for finding foreign
intelligence moles." This, to some extent, is the division
of labor in Europe as well.
Germany's Federal Prosecutor has consistently warned
against $5 billion worth of secrets pilfered annually from
German industrial firms by foreign intelligence services,
especially from east Europe and Russia. The
Counterintelligence News and Developments newsletter
pegs the damage at $13 billion in 1996 alone:
"Modus operandi included placing agents in
international organizations, setting up joint-ventures
with German companies, and setting up bogus
companies. The (Federal Prosecutor's) report also
warned business leaders to be particularly wary of
former diplomats or people who used to work for foreign
secret services because they often had the language
skills and knowledge of Germany that made them
excellent agents".
Russian spy rings now operate from Canada to Japan.
Many of the spies have been dormant for decades and
recalled to service following the implosion of the USSR.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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