The Kremlin's counterintelligence operations

[Abdullah719]

The UK government has accused Russia's military intelligence service of being behind four high-profile cyber-attacks.

The National Cyber Security Centre says targets included firms in Russia and Ukraine; the US Democratic Party; and a small TV network in the UK.

A Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman described the accusation as a "rich fantasy of our colleagues from Britain".

World Anti-Doping Agency computers are also said to have been attacked.

Files later emerged showing how British cyclists Sir Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome had used banned substances for legitimate medical reasons.

At the time, some of the attacks were linked to Russia - but this is the first time the UK has singled out the GRU, the Russian military intelligence service.

British police think the men who carried out the Salisbury poisoning in March worked for the same group.

Speaking on behalf of the Russian foreign ministry, Maria Zakharova said the UK's accusations were "mixed in one perfume bottle", adding: "Maybe a Nina Ricci bottle: GRU, WADA, Kremlin hackers - it's a diabolical perfume."

But Defence Minister Gavin Williamson condemned Russia as a "pariah state", and said Moscow's "reckless and indiscriminate" attacks had left it isolated in the international community.

The NCSC said it has assessed "with high confidence" that the GRU was "almost certainly responsible" for the cyber-attacks.

Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said the GRU had waged a campaign of "indiscriminate and reckless" cyber strikes that served "no legitimate national security interest".

Cyber security consultant Andrew Tsonchev said individuals can get "caught up" in the attacks.

He said: "The more obvious and urgent effect that people need to be aware of is that the services they use - the essential services - are at risk and are actively being targeted for sabotage."

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-45741520

 

[gazza619]

UK / Russia relations are at an all time low. A lof of UK businesses have also impacted. I can tell as some of my clients are unable to sell to their Russian customers anymore as the UK banks are not accepting remitances from Russia.

 

[MenInG]

The US has charged six Russian hackers over a series of global cyber attacks, including trying to undermine UK efforts to hold Moscow accountable for the Salisbury spy poisoning.

The charging announcement came as Britain accused Russian cyber spies of attacking the 2020 Olympics and Paralympics before they were postponed, and of posing as Chinese and North Korean hackers to target the 2018 games.

Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, described the actions of Russia's GRU military intelligence service as "cynical and reckless".

The UK named the specific group it said was behind the attacks as the GRU's Main Centre for Special Technologies, also known as Unit 74455.

This is the same group of hackers that allegedly targeted the 2016 US presidential election.

The US Justice Department said a federal grand jury in Pittsburgh returned an indictment charging six computer hackers, who are all allegedly members of Unit 74455.

It accused the hackers "and their co-conspirators" of cyber attacks against the UK's defence laboratory at Porton Down and the UN's chemical weapons watchdog in the Hague in April 2018, as both organisations investigated the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury.

The UK accused Russia of the nerve agent attack with a novichok toxin.

The hackers were also accused of targeting the French presidential election in 2017. Then presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron's campaign was hit by a hack and leak attack just ahead of polling day.

Other attacks linked to the group included against Ukraine, Georgia and the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympic Games in South Korea.

In its separate statement, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office accused Russia of conducting "reconnaissance" against organisers of the 2020 summer games in Tokyo before the event was delayed because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Targets also included companies involved in logistics for the games as well as sponsors.

The games had been scheduled to take place from 23 July to 8 August but were postponed in March until 2021.

Details of the reconnaissance were not revealed but it could involve things like setting up fake websites pretending to be a particular organisation, or creating accounts pretending to be a certain individual.

The aim could well have been to try and disrupt the global sporting bonanza at a time when Russia is banned from taking part for four years because of a doping scandal.

"The GRU's actions against the Olympic and Paralympic Games are cynical and reckless. We condemn them in the strongest possible terms," Mr Raab said in a statement.

"The UK will continue to work with our allies to call out and counter future malicious cyber attacks."

The timing of UK's allegation being released is in part to raise awareness about the cyber threat as organisers prepare to hold the delayed Olympics next year in Japan.

The foreign office also for the first time confirmed details about a 2018 cyber attack on the Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games in Pyeongchang.

"The GRU's cyber unit attempted to disguise itself as North Korean and Chinese hackers when it targeted the opening ceremony of the 2018 Winter Games," it said.

"It went on to target broadcasters, a ski resort, Olympic officials and sponsors of the games in 2018. The GRU deployed data-deletion malware against the Winter Games IT systems and targeted devices across the Republic of Korea using VPNFilter."

The Russian hackers' alleged attempt to cover their tracks included using certain snippets of code and techniques to try to confuse investigators into think they were from China and North Korea.

The UK's National Cyber Security Centre, a branch of GCHQ, believe Russia's aim was to sabotage the running of the games, the Foreign Office said.

It noted that the malware used by the hackers in the 2018 attack was designed to wipe data from, and disable, computers and networks.

"Administrators worked to isolate the malware and replace the affected computers, preventing potential disruption," the Foreign Office said.

GRU Unit 74455 is also known as a number of other names including Sandworm, BlackEnergy Group and Voodoo Bear.

The UK has previously attributed other major cyber attacks to the group, including the June 2017 NotPetya attack against financial, energy and government sectors in Ukraine, but which spread across the world causing widespread damage.

https://news.sky.com/story/us-charg...french-elections-and-winter-olympics-12108610

 

[Last Monetarist]

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-italy-russia-spies/italy-arrests-navy-captain-for-spying-expels-russian-diplomats-idUSKBN2BN0W6

Italy expelled two Russian diplomats on Wednesday after police said they had caught an Italian navy captain passing secret documents to a Russian military official in return for money. The Italian captain and the Russian embassy staff member were arrested in a car park in Rome and accused of “serious crimes tied to spying and state security” after their meeting on Tuesday night, Italian Carabinieri police said.

The suspects were not officially identified. A police source said the captain was called Walter Biot and had accepted 5,000 euros ($5,900) in return for the information.

It was not immediately possible to contact Biot, who was in custody, and the name of his lawyer was not disclosed.

Ansa news agency said NATO documents were among the files that the Italian had handed over, raising potential security worries for other members of the Western military alliance.

Italy immediately summoned the Russian ambassador Sergey Razov and expelled two Russian officials believed to be involved in what Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio called an “extremely grave matter”.

Biot, 54, had the rank of a frigate captain but was working at the defense ministry department tasked with developing national security policy and managing part of the relations with Italy’s allies, a ministry source told Reuters.

Previously, he had worked at the ministry’s external relations unit. His name and picture appear in the book of contacts for Italy’s 2014 European Union presidency.

“The accusation of espionage against Italian and Russian officers shows that we must continue to work closely with Europe and our allies to constantly improve our means of protecting the safety and well-being of our citizens,” Di Maio said. Russian news agencies, citing the Russian embassy in Italy, said the pair who were expelled worked in the military attaché’s office. Officials did not say whether the Russian army official who had met the captain was one of those ordered to leave.

Russia’s Interfax news agency quoted a Russian lawmaker as saying Moscow would reciprocate for the expulsions, standard practice in such cases.

However, statements from Moscow suggested Russia was keen to play down the incident. The Russian foreign ministry was quoted as saying that it regretted the expulsions, but that they did not threaten bilateral relations.

Earlier, the Kremlin said it did not have information about the circumstances of the case but hoped the two countries would maintain positive and constructive ties.

The incident was the latest in a series of spying accusations in recent months against Russians in European countries. Bulgaria expelled Russian officials on suspicion of spying in March, and the Netherlands did so in December.

Tuesday’s arrests were ordered by prosecutors following a long investigation carried out by the Italian intelligence with the support of the military, the police said.

 

[Last Monetarist]

Fairly old hat for the likes of Moscow Centre at the end of the day.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-italy-russia-spies/suspected-italian-spy-had-four-children-financial-problems-wife-says-idUSKBN2BO5BA?il=0

An Italian navy captain caught allegedly passing secret documents to a Russian military attache in return for cash was hard-up and struggling to provide for his four children, his wife has told an Italian newspaper.

Walter Biot, 54, was arrested on Tuesday in a Rome carpark moments after he was seen receiving 5,000 euros ($5,900) from the Russian official in return for information contained on a USB key, a police source said.

Italy, which has traditionally enjoyed better relations with Moscow than many other Western states, immediately expelled two Russian diplomats in retaliation and denounced the alleged espionage as a “hostile act”.

The Russian foreign ministry was quoted as saying on Wednesday that it regretted the expulsions, but that they did not threaten bilateral relations.

Biot is in custody and faces a minimum 15 years in prison if found guilty of military espionage. He went before a magistrate on Thursday and declined to answer questions, his lawyer Roberto De Vita said.

“He said he was dazed and disoriented, but ready to clarify his position. He asked for time to collect his thoughts,” De Vita said. The court confirmed the custody order and declined a request for Biot to be held under house arrest.

Biot’s wife, Claudia Carbonara, told Corriere della Sera newspaper that she knew nothing of what had happened, but also said that Biot had not handed over anything compromising, just “the minimum he could give”.

“He is not stupid or irresponsible. He was just desperate,” she was quoted as saying.

Carbonara, a psychotherapist, said their large family was in financial difficulty and could not make ends meet on his salary of 3,000 euros a month, with expenses including 1,200 euros a month on their mortgage.

Contacted by Reuters, Carbonara declined to comment.

Other newspapers reported that Carbonara had struggled to work as a result of coronavirus lockdowns over the past year.

Biot has the rank of a frigate captain and had had a desk job since 2010. He was currently working at the defense ministry department tasked with developing national security policy.

The Russian official who was seized on Tuesday had diplomatic immunity so could not be held.

He and a colleague, who both worked in the military attache’s office at the Russian embassy in Rome, flew back to Moscow on Thursday, a diplomatic source said.

The Italian media named them as Dmitry Ostroukhov and Alexei Nemudrov. Russian authorities have not released their names.

Italy has relatively good ties with Moscow, and has been at the forefront of efforts to try to end international sanctions against Russia. Looking to show goodwill, Russia last year sent military doctors and medical equipment to help Italy battle an initial outbreak of coronavirus.

 

[Giannis]

So it's okay for the British to come up with conspiracy theories and blame other countries for their problems?

 

[Technics 1210]

GCHQ - ding dong.

Save us from these hypocritical cries of despair!

 

[Last Monetarist]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/17/russian-security-service-detains-ukrainian-diplomat

Russia’s FSB security service said it had detained a Ukrainian diplomat, accusing him of receiving sensitive information from a Russian national.

In recent years Russia has detained a number of Ukrainian nationals on suspicion of spying but the detention of a diplomat is rare and seen as a sign of sharply rising tensions.

“A Ukrainian diplomat, a consul of Ukraine’s consulate general in St Petersburg, Alexander Sosonyuk, has been detained by Russia’s FSB,” the security service said, using the Russian-language spelling of his name. He had been detained on Friday, the FSB said.

Kyiv confirmed the diplomat had spent several hours in detention and was now back in the Ukrainian diplomatic mission.

The FSB said Sosonyuk had been caught “red-handed” during a meeting with a Russian national as he sought to receive “classified” information.

“Such activity is not compatible with his diplomatic status and is of clearly hostile nature towards the Russian Federation,” the FSB said. “In conformity with international law, measures will be taken against the foreign diplomat.”

In Kyiv, Ukraine’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Oleg Nikolenko, put the incident to rising tensions between the two countries. “This is yet another provocation amid Russia’s destabilising activities,” he told Agence France-Presse in a statement.

He said Kyiv was looking into the incident and would respond in the near future.

Tensions between Russia and Ukraine have escalated in recent weeks, with Kyiv accusing Moscow of massing troops on its border and seeking to destroy “Ukrainian statehood”.

Kyiv has been battling Russia-backed separatists in the east of Ukraine since 2014 and clashes have intensified since the start of the year, shredding a ceasefire agreed last July.

Concern has been mounting that the long-simmering conflict could spiral back into wider fighting, and the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has asked the west for help.

 

[Last Monetarist]

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/baltic-states-join-nato-allies-kicking-out-russians-spying-2021-04-23/

Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia on Friday joined a fast-growing list of NATO and EU members demanding the removal of Russian diplomats for alleged spying, in actions that have infuriated Moscow and look certain to provoke further retaliation.

A spate of titfortat expulsions has plunged ties between Russia and countries of the former Soviet bloc to their lowest point since the fall of Communism, prompting Moscow to accuse at least two of them of deliberately wrecking relations.

Lithuania said it was sending two diplomats home and Latvia and Estonia one each. "The EU should have less undercover Russian spies," Lithuanian foreign affairs minister Gabrielius Landsbergis told reporters.

Three decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Moscow maintains imposing and generously staffed embassies across central and eastern Europe, which the host countries say provide convenient cover for espionage.

The Baltic states - together with Slovakia, which ordered out three Russians on Thursday - appeared to be responding to an appeal this week from the Czech Republic for European Union and NATO allies to show solidarity in removing Russian spies.

In addition, Bulgaria and Poland have expelled two and three Russians respectively, prompting Moscow to show the door to two Bulgarians and five Poles.

The Czechs are embroiled in the biggest row of all, which looks set to involve the departure of dozens of Czech and Russian diplomats and was prompted by Czech allegations that Russian intelligence was behind a deadly explosion at an ammunication depot in 2014.

Daniel Milo, senior adviser at Bratislava-based policy institute GLOBSEC, said the combined moves suggested greater self-confidence on the part of the Central Europeans and could have implications for areas such an energy cooperation, where the region has until now been heavily dependent on Russia.

"Russia perhaps needs to see this is not an isolated act of a small country of 10 million people (the Czech Republic) but that there is true sense of solidarity across the EU or NATO," he said.

"If that happens, it might serve as a strong deterrent to any future attempts to carry out such (spying) activities, as they did with the feeling of impunity previously."

The spy rows have come at a time of acute tensions between Russia and the West, including over Ukraine and over the fate of opposition Russian leader Alexei Navalny, who on Friday announced he was ending a three-week hunger strike in jail.

The Kremlin this week complained of "mass anti-Russian psychosis" and President Vladimir Putin threatened foreign powers with an "asymmetric, fast and harsh" response if they crossed what Russia regards as its red lines.

Such rhetoric makes it appear unlikely that Russia - which has yet to announce its response to the Slovak and Baltic moves - will allow the disputes to quietly subside.

The depth of Russia's bitterness over its treatment by former allies was reflected in a foreign ministry statement on Friday after Moscow had summoned the Polish ambassador for a dressing-down.

"Through the efforts of the Polish authorities in recent years, contacts with Russia have been virtually frozen, a shameful war with Soviet monuments has been launched, attempts are being made to torpedo Russian energy projects, a large-scale anti-Russian information campaign is being carried out, history is being falsified, and anti-Russian sanctions by the West are endlessly prolonged," it said.

 

[Robert]

UK / Russia relations are at an all time low. A lof of UK businesses have also impacted. I can tell as some of my clients are unable to sell to their Russian customers anymore as the UK banks are not accepting remitances from Russia.

This surprises me as there is no U.K. Magnitsky Act, and London is basically a clearing house laundering dirty oligarch money.

 

[Last Monetarist]

https://www.reuters.com/world/butina-convicted-us-being-russian-agent-eyes-parliament-seat-2021-04-28/

Maria Butina, who was jailed in the United States after admitting to working as a Russian agent, said on Wednesday she had applied to take part in primaries for Russia's ruling party to run for a parliamentary seat.

Butina, now 32, pleaded guilty in December 2018 to infiltrating a U.S. gun rights group and influencing conservative activists and Republicans.

Moscow said the charges were ridiculous and she had been forced to confess. She was deported back to Russia in October 2019 after serving most of her 18-month sentence, and welcomed home with pomp.

"Today I submitted documents to take part in United Russia's primaries, which will determine the party's candidates for the State Duma from the Kirov region," Butina wrote on Wednesday on messaging service Telegram. The election to the Duma, Russia's lower house, is scheduled for September.

Since returning to Russia, Butina has hosted a show on state funded RT television that mocks the opposition. Earlier this month, she visited then-hunger striking Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny in prison, and argued with him on camera about the conditions of his detention.

 

[Last Monetarist]

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/bulgaria-sees-possible-russian-involvement-munitions-depot-blasts-2021-04-28/

Bulgarian prosecutors said they are collecting evidence on the possible involvement of six Russians in four explosions between 2011 and 2020 at Bulgarian arms depots that were storing munitions for export to Ukraine and Georgia.

A spokeswoman said prosecutors could reasonably assume links between the blasts in Bulgaria, the attempted poisoning of Bulgarian arms trader Emilian Gebrev in 2015, and munitions depot explosions in the Czech Republic in 2014.

The six Russians were in Bulgaria around the dates when the arms depot blasts occurred and attempts were made to poison Gebrev, prosecutors' spokeswoman Siyka Mileva told a news briefing on Wednesday.

"The collected evidence points so far, with a great degree of credibility, to the conclusion that the aim of the actions of the Russian citizens was to stop the supplies of (munitions) to Georgia and Ukraine," Mileva said.

"Evidence is being collected on the complicity of these six Russian citizens."

Ukraine has been at odds with Russia since 2014 when its Crimea region was annexed by Moscow and Russian-backed separatists launched an insurgency in Ukraine's east. Tensions between Russia and Georgia have been high since their 2008 war.

Mileva said prosecutors were liaising with counterparts in the Czech Republic to establish possible links between the Bulgaria blasts and the 2014 explosions at the Czech depot, which also stored munitions owned by Gebrev.

Moscow has rejected the Czech allegations as absurd and on Wednesday Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov dismissed the Bulgarian investigation. "Either the Bulgarian side knew nothing and only now, after the Czech Republic announced the 2014 incident, decided to outshine the Czechs and look further back into history," Lavrov told reporters. "Or they knew about for all this time but did not make it public for some reason."

Mileva did not name the Russian citizens or provide other details about them but said three Russians who have been charged with the attempted murder of Gebrev were likely to have been intelligence agents.

Prosecutors said the explosion at an arms depot owned by Gebrev's company EMCO in 2011, two blasts at state arms company VMZ in 2015, and a fourth at private arms producer Arsenal in 2020 all lacked obvious, technical causes.

The blasts were all triggered remotely and followed the outbreak of fires that the perpetrators apparently timed to allow workers to leave the area and avoid casualties, Mileva said.

"In all of the four blasts, production destined for export to Georgia and Ukraine was destroyed," she said.

In a statement, EMCO said the munitions destroyed at its depot in 2011 were not intended for export to Georgia and denied any link to the blasts at VMZ. EMCO urged prosecutors to seek the real reasons for the explosions.

Czech authorities ordered most Russian diplomatic staff in Prague to leave last week after accusing Russian spies of being behind ammunition depot blasts. Russia expelled Czech diplomats in retaliation. Bulgaria has voiced solidarity with Prague.

 

[Last Monetarist]

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/bulgaria-expels-russian-diplomat-over-arms-depot-blasts-2021-04-29/

Bulgaria on Thursday announced the expulsion of a Russian diplomat after prosecutors said they suspected Russian involvement in four explosions at arms depots in Bulgaria.

At a meeting with the Russian ambassador, Foreign Minister Ekaterina Zaharieva requested full Russian cooperation with Bulgaria's investigation of the explosions and of attempts to poison Bulgarian arms trader Emilian Gebrev.

Moscow, which has dismissed the Bulgarian probe, said it would respond to the expulsion.

The Bulgarian move follows a series of diplomatic disputes between Russia and other former Soviet-bloc countries in the wake of Czech accusations that Russia was behind a blast in an arms depot in 2014. Bulgaria, once the Soviet Union's closest ally in eastern Europe, has expelled eight other Russian diplomats for alleged spying since October 2019.

Zaharieva said Sofia reserved the right to take further measures and demanded that Russian diplomats refrain from actions incompatible with their status.

"Bulgaria wants to keep equal and mutually beneficial relations with Russia and that is why it insists on an active and result-orientated cooperation from Russia to shed light on the circumstances around the incidents," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

On Wednesday, prosecutors said they had reason to believe there was a link between the blasts in Bulgaria that took place between 2011 and 2020, the attempted murder of Bulgarian arms trader Emilian Gebrev and the blast in the Czech Republic.

Sofia has charged three Russians, which it said were very likely to belong to Russia's GRU military intelligence service, with the poisoning of Gebrev and two other Bulgarians in 2015.

Prague has also accused GRU agents of carrying out the Czech blast in 2014.

 

[Last Monetarist]

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russias-prague-embassy-stronghold-cleared-out-spy-dispute-2021-05-31/

A Russian charter plane took home dozens of Russian embassy staff on Monday, abruptly ending what Czech officials say was a decades-old practice by Moscow of using a disproportionately huge mission in Prague as a base for its spy activities.

The Czechs sent home 123 Russian staff and family members from the embassy on flights on Saturday and Monday, on top of 18 staff already branded spies and expelled in April, when Prague accused Moscow of blowing up an arms depot in 2014.

Under a new agreement, Russia and the Czech Republic will each limit the size of the other's embassy to just seven diplomats and 25 support staff.

Russia has denied a role in the Czech arms depot explosions, in which two people were found dead. The Russian embassy did not respond to emails and phone calls seeking an explanation for why its mission in a country of 10.7 million people had been so big.

Several former Czech intelligence officials said the huge Russian embassy had long been a headache for them - and an important asset for Moscow.

"When you can have 140 people here, you have let's say 80 people as members of the FSB, GRU or other (intelligence) services, than it is of course beneficial because they do not have anything like that elsewhere," said Karel Randak, former director of Czech intelligence.

Although the Czech Republic is now a member of NATO and the EU, the huge Russian embassy was a relic of the Soviet era, when Czechoslovakia was a satelite of Moscow, said Jiri Schneider, former deputy foreign minister.

"The Soviet embassy in then Czechoslovakia, with hundreds of thousands of Soviet occupation troops, was an embassy in a colony," Schneider said.

At the Vaclav Havel Airport, named for the writer who became president after leading the Velvet Revolution that toppled Communist rule, the Russian diplomats queued at Terminal 3, used for charter flights, to board a government plane.

The embassy, housed in a villa in the leafy Bubenec neighbourhood built by a pre-war industrialist and nationalised after World War II, grew after a 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia crushed a reform movement.

Although Soviet troops pulled out in 1991, Russia was still able to maintain its huge embassy, Czech experts said, due to diplomatic protocols that meant any titfor-tat reduction would have hurt the smaller Czech Moscow mission in Moscow more.

The Czech counter-intelligence agency, BIS, said in its 2019 annual report that the mission's size made controlling Russia's intelligence efforts "extremely difficult". For example, it has maintained a huge fleet of cars, off-limits to police.

Because of its central location, Czech territory could also be used by Russian agents for electronic eavesdropping, said Jan Padourek, former deputy director of Czech intelligence.

"The Czech Republic has an important geostrategic location on the frontier with the then West, which allowed for the use of technical means, not only human intelligence, to monitor the neighbouring Western countries."

 

[Last Monetarist]

Bet the circus won't be nonplussed by another failure.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/11/german-police-arrest-briton-on-suspicion-of-spying-for-russia

German police have arrested a British man who worked at the British embassy in Berlin on suspicion of spying for Russian intelligence in exchange for cash bribes, according to prosecutors.

Germany’s highest public prosecutor said the man, identified only as David S, was arrested at his Potsdam apartment at 2.20pm on Tuesday, and his home and embassy workplace were searched.

The 57-year-old Briton is understood not to be a diplomat but a private contractor working as a security guard at the Berlin embassy and therefore does not hold diplomatic immunity.

He is suspected of having worked for a Russian intelligence agency at least since November 2020, at least once passing on documents he had acquired through his work to a handler.

He is alleged to have been paid a cash bribe to pass information to Russian intelligence.

He is a British national and was under surveillance by British and German investigators, believed to have included MI5, but officials reluctant to discuss when that started.

The operation that led to David S being suspected was “intelligence-led”.

He is alleged to have received cash payments of an as yet unspecified sum in exchange for information. Citing prosecutors’ circles, the German news magazine Focus reported on Wednesday that the information passed on related to counter-terrorism issues.

Germany’s public prosecutor said the arrest was the result of a joint investigation by German and British authorities. The Metropolitan police said the investigation into David S had involved Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism officers.

“The man was arrested in the Berlin area on suspicion of committing offences relating to being engaged in ‘intelligence agent activity’ (under German law),” the Metropolitan police said.

“Primacy for the investigation remains with German authorities. Officers from the counter-terrorism command continue to liaise with German counterparts as the investigation continues.”

The Met’s counter-terrorism command is responsible for investigating alleged breaches of the Official Secrets Act.

A spokesperson for the British Home Office said: “An individual who was contracted to work for the government was arrested yesterday by the German authorities. It would not be appropriate to comment further as there is an ongoing police investigation.”

Nick Thomas-Symonds, the shadow home secretary, said the allegations potentially amounted to a “serious breach of UK national security”.

“All measures must now be taken – urgently – to establish exactly what information has been passed to Russian intelligence and the impact this has on the UK, as well as that of our allies,” he said.

“This is yet another example of the real threat posed by Russia, so it is unacceptable that Conservative ministers have been so slow to enact the measures necessary to protect the UK, including implementing the recommendations of the Russia report.”

 

[Last Monetarist]

Seems Moscow Centre has successfully caused mayhem again.

https://www.reuters.com/world/russian-analyst-who-helped-compile-steele-dossier-arrested-us-probe-new-york-2021-11-04/

The Russian analyst who helped compile the "Steele dossier" alleging potential ties between Donald Trump's 2016 campaign and Russia was arrested on Thursday as part of a U.S. special counsel probe, the New York Times reported.

A lawyer for the analyst, Igor Danchenko, and Justice Department spokespeople did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Two sources familiar with the activities of John Durham, the special prosecutor appointed by former President Trump's Justice Department to investigate issues related to the Steele dossier, said that Durham had issued subpoenas seeking evidence from multiple sources, including people linked to Fusion GPS, the Washington, D.C. investigations firm that commissioned it.

Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer who prepared the dossier for Fusion GPS, which was working for a law firm that represented the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, declined to comment in an emailed message.

One of the sources familiar with Durham's activities said that Fusion GPS was not a target of Durham's investigation. Steele had previously declined to cooperate with investigators working for Durham.

The dossier, which was circulated to the FBI and media outlets before the 2016 election, set out still-unproven allegations that Russia had embarrassing information about Trump and some of his campaign advisers and that Moscow was working behind the scenes to defeat Clinton.

In an email to Reuters a year ago, Danchenko denied he was a Russian agent, disputing suggestions by congressional allies of Trump.

"I am exactly what the Department of Justice National Security Division, the FBI, the FBI Inspector General, the Special Counsel and the Republican Senate Intelligence Committee has determined; an experienced expert in Russian affairs who has spent more than a decade in business intelligence," Danchenko told Reuters.