Facts: Illegal intelligence activities
According to the Criminal Code 19:10, “anyone who, with the intention of going to a foreign power secretly or using fraudulent means, either conducts activities for the acquisition of information whose disclosure to a foreign power could cause damage to Sweden’s security or participates in such activities” shall be convicted of illegal intelligence activities against Sweden.
Illegal intelligence activities can also be directed at individuals rather than the state of Sweden.
The penalty scale for illegal intelligence activities is imprisonment for a maximum of two years. If the crime is deemed serious, imprisonment for between six months and four years applies.
Source: Criminal Code
It is six o’clock on Tuesday morning when the silence in the villa idyll just outside Stockholm is broken by the roar of the Armed Forces’ Blackhawk helicopters flying low over snow-covered treetops.
In the dark, dazed neighbors glimpse how they sweep in over the houses and remain hovering over a whitewashed villa. Shocked, they see the operators from the national task force being repelled down over the house at the same time as the street outside is filled with dark police vehicles.
The villa is surrounded, windows are smashed and two people are arrested before the helicopters rise again into the sky. It’s all over in a minute.
A couple of hours later, the Security Police announces that two people have been arrested. One of them is suspected of gross illegal intelligence activities against Sweden and against a foreign power, the other of aiding and abetting.
The suspicions relate to activities that stretch back to 2013. According to Säpo, the investigation has been going on for “a long time”.
Rotor blades in the dark
It is only when the news is broadcast that the neighbors understand what they witnessed in the morning hours.
— The rotor blades were all you could hear in the dark. They have always been nice and friendly, but now you wonder what kind of neighbors you have, says a resident of one of the adjacent houses.
The day after the dawn raid, calm, at least on the surface, has returned to the neighborhood. In the whitewashed villa, the curtains are drawn, the broken windows have been covered with plastic.
A married couple in their 60s and their adult son have lived at the address since 2015. The family, which also includes the wife’s older daughter from a previous relationship, immigrated from Russia in the late 90s and became Swedish citizens about ten years later.
According to the Tax Agency, the man and children were born in Moscow, and the woman in the Perm region, 150 miles east of the capital.
Under the supervision of the Swedish Tax Agency
They moved to the then newly built house from an apartment in another part of the same municipality, where they had lived since immigrating to Sweden.
They have lived a seemingly ordinary life. In pictures from social media published in several media, the couple can be seen vacationing in different countries. But in 2013, at the same time as the intelligence operations allegedly began, they stopped updating their pages.
As CEO and vice CEO respectively, they have run two companies that engaged in trade in electronics and industrial equipment and consulting activities aimed at Swedish companies operating in Russia.
In 2016, the companies came under the scrutiny of the Swedish Tax Agency after suspicions that they had sold goods to a sham company in Holland. After a decision in the administrative court, the authority was now allowed to enter the couple’s villa in search of documents that there was considered to be a “substantial risk” that they would otherwise withhold or destroy.
“Potentially Sensitive”
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Total Defense Research Institute, FOI, has a government mandate to examine Russian financial interests in Sweden. A central part has been to look more closely at Swedish companies with Russian owners.
One of the couple’s companies, which was placed into liquidation in 2020, is included in the review and is controlled, according to public ownership records, by a Russian man residing in Russia, something The evening paper first reported.
— It is a company that trades in technology, and it is an area that could be potentially sensitive to transferring technology to Russia. Then we also discovered that it is interesting for other reasons, says Oscar Almén, project manager at FOI.
What has attracted FOI’s interest is the principal in Russia. According to Tomas Malmlöf, a security policy researcher who reviewed the company, a person with the same name and date of birth has been found via open sources who is connected to Russia’s military intelligence service, the GRU.
“I see the probability that it is the same person as quite high,” he says.
“Can’t Live Double”
David Bergman, PhD in psychology at the Norwegian Defense Academy, believes that what is known about the couple’s company points to industrial espionage.
— It is reasonably pure industrial espionage. The type of import and export you deal with is also a good way to bring money in and out of the country, he says.
If the suspicions against the couple are true, they are so-called “illegalists”, sleeper agents, who act outside of regular intelligence work.
— Illegals need to be reliable people who should be able to live a normal life under the radar and manage this for a long time. The recruitment takes place in the home country or you see that there is already someone in place here who you approach a little cautiously and see if they would be willing to do services for the old home country.
TT: What would be required psychologically to maintain the facade for so many years?
— To a certain extent, you have to live the real life. It is not possible to live twice. If you are going to have a cover, it is best to have it very close to who you really are. I live my normal life, like technology and work in this environment. I just happen to hide that I have a little ulterior motive as to why I do it.
Brothers on trial
The woman in the couple has been released, but the suspicions against her remain. The man was arrested on Friday in the Stockholm district court on probable cause, suspected of gross illegal intelligence activities against Sweden and against a foreign power.
Prosecutor Henrik Olin then confirmed the connection to the GRU, and revealed that the foreign power referred to is the United States.
“It’s about technology acquisition for the Russian military industry,” he told a press conference.
In another room in the same building, the trial began on the same day against two brothers, 35 and 42 years old, who are suspected of having spied on Sweden for ten years on behalf of Russia and the GRU.
David Bergman talks a bit jokingly about a ketchup effect.
— I don’t think we’ve seen the last of this. Säpo has been warning about this for so many years. We have seen a radical increase in Russian intelligence activities and these are probably two of those cases, he says, adding:
— It underlines the importance of having a functioning military intelligence service and a civilian security service.
The couple denies wrongdoing.