Est veroordeelt voor spionage (en)
Herman Simm, a former Estonian defence official, was sentenced on Wednesday (25 February) to 12 and a half years of prison and €1.288 million damages for passing NATO and EU classified information to Russian intelligence services.
"Yes, I did work for foreign intelligence services. Yes, I did know the people whom I was sending the information were members of the Russian services," Mr Simm conceded on a video tape shown by prosecutors after the trial, which was held behind closed doors, AFP reports.
"When you did such a thing, you have to live with the consequences," he added.
"He pleaded guilty, that is why the trial was brief," Kristina Ots, the court's spokeswoman explained.
This was Estonia's first treason case since it regained independence from the Soviet Union, in 1991.
The 61-year-old Mr Simm was accused of treason for having passed on to the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) over 2,000 pages of secret documents on Estonia's defence policies and its external military relations.
A graduate of a Soviet-era police academy in Moscow, Mr Simm started working for the Estonian defence ministry in 1995, as head of the information analysis office, and in 2001 was appointed head of the newly formed state secret protection department, responsible with issuing access to classified information and for handling NATO and EU data.
"We think that he started working for Russian intelligence in 1995," Gerrit Maeselu, a spokesperson for the Estonian prosecutor office told the New York Times, adding that Mr Simm was in a position to hand over intelligence on NATO starting in 2001, when Estonia began accession talks with the alliance, which it joined three years later.
The Harju county court also ordered Mr Simm to pay €1.288 million to cover damage done to "security systems and data systems," which must now be overhauled.
EU secrets compromised
The EU's internal security procedures were also compromised, as Mr Simm "had total access to NATO and EU stuff and was handing everything he could find to his Russian handlers," one EU diplomat told the Financial Times.
Prosecutors say Mr Simm delivered intelligence to two handlers from Russia's SVR, whom they identified as Valery Zentsov and Sergei Yakovlev. The Kremlin has denied working with Mr Simm.
The former Estonian official had contacts in about 15 European countries, where he travelled for business or leisure, Mr Maesalu added.
According to Estonian media, Mr Simm claimed to be a victim of Russian blackmail due to his former collaboration with the Soviet secret services, the KGB.
Unlike other Eastern European countries, the KGB archives in Estonia were transferred to Moscow or destroyed before the country gained independence, after having been illegally annexed by the USSR. Former collaborators of the KGB were asked in the early 1990s to make themselves known. Approximately 1,000 people answered to this request after having been assured that they would not be prosecuted for the admission.
Talking to EUobserver in November last year, after Mr Simm had been formally charged for treason, Estonian MEP Tunne Kelam said the case was "rather grotesque," but probably not one-of-a-kind.
"Russia is interested in expanding its influence to all member states of the EU. It's part of their strategy to regain control over the former Soviet areas and to weaken the EU," Mr Kelam said, adding that the method used was a "typically Soviet one."
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