3 Charged With Working as Agents for Russia in New York

By BENJAMIN WEISERJAN. 26, 2015

The three men would typically agree to meet outside, where one might tell another that he had a book, umbrella or hat to pass on. Then, at the appointed time and place, the secret handoff would occur: a bag, magazine or slip of paper changing hands.

But what was really being transferred, according to a federal complaint, was intelligence — gathered by the men on behalf of S.V.R., the Russian foreign intelligence agency.

In a case full of intrigue and clandestine communications, the three Russians were charged on Monday with working secretly in New York as agents for Russian intelligence, the federal authorities said.

Two of the Russians posed as official representatives of Russia. The third man worked in the Manhattan office of a Russian bank and was arrested in the Bronx. All three men worked for Directorate ER, an S.V.R. division that focuses on economic issues.

The three Russians — as well as unnamed others — had been directed to collect intelligence on potential United States sanctions against the Russian Federation and on efforts by the United States to develop alternative energy resources, the complaint said.

Evgeny Buryakov, 39, was arrested in the Bronx on Monday, the authorities said. He was ordered detained by a federal magistrate judge. In a brief phone interview, his federal public defender, Sabrina Shroff, declined to comment on the charges except to say that she had argued for bail because her client was neither a flight risk nor a danger to the community.

Mr. Buryakov’s LinkedIn profile says he works for the Russian bank Vnesheconombank, which is on the United States sanctions list. He had been in this country under “nonofficial cover,” sometimes referred to as NOC. Mr. Buryakov would get assignments from the other two defendants: Igor Sporyshev, 40, a trade representative of the Russian Federation in New York; and Victor Podobnyy, 27, an attaché to the Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations. Mr. Sporyshev and Mr. Podobnyy would analyze Mr. Buryakov’s work and report back to Moscow, the authorities said.

Mr. Sporyshev and Mr. Podobnyy, who were protected by diplomatic immunity, are no longer in the United States, the government said. As employees of the Russian government, they were exempt from notifying the United States attorney general of their intelligence work, the authorities said. But the government said they were not permitted to conspire with Mr. Buryakov, who was not registered as an agent of Russia working here.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation conducted physical or electronic surveillance of Mr. Buryakov and Mr. Sporyshev in over four dozen brief meetings between March 2012 and last September. In one conversation, which occurred inside the S.V.R.’s New York office, Mr. Podobnyy and an unidentified S.V.R. agent were recorded talking about Mr. Sporyshev’s “cover” position.

“What is his cover? The Chamber of Commerce?” the agent asked.

“No, No,” Mr. Podobnyy replied. “New York Office of the Trade Mission of the Russian Federation in the United States.”

Another time, two of the defendants were discussing how mundane their work was at times, the complaint says. Mr. Podobnyy appears to tell Mr. Sporyshev that his work was “not even close” to a James Bond movie.

“Of course,” Mr. Podobnyy seems to acknowledge, “I wouldn’t fly helicopters,” but at a minimum, he says, he could “pretend to be someone else.”

Mr. Sporyshev and another S.V.R. agent were also overheard discussing their contracts with Russian intelligence, the authorities said. “Everyone has a five-year contract,” Mr. Sporyshev was quoted as telling the other man.

Mr. Buryakov was charged with acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government. Mr. Podobnyy and Mr. Sporyshev were charged with aiding and abetting him. All three men were charged with conspiracy.

Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, said the charges showed that “more than two decades after the presumptive end of the Cold War, Russian spies continue to seek to operate in our midst under cover of secrecy.”

The charges grew out of an investigation that began just a few months after 10 Russian agents under deep cover assignments in the United States pleaded guilty to conspiracy in July 2010, according to a criminal complaint unsealed in Federal District Court.

Those 10 sleeper agents, whose cases inspired the television show “The Americans,” were sentenced to time served and traded back to Moscow for four Russian prisoners, including three who had been serving long sentences after treason convictions for spying.

The agents were overheard discussing the arrests of the 10 Russian agents. Those agents “couldn’t do anything,” Mr. Podobnyy says, adding, “and then Putin even tried to justify that they weren’t even tasked to work, they were sleeper cells in case of martial law.”