A Russian-born U.S. citizen already serving time in Russia for bribery has received an additional 15-year sentence for espionage, independent publication Mediazonareported on Tuesday. Details surrounding the espionage case have not been made public.
Eugene (Gene) Spector, a former executive in Russia's medical equipment industry, was first arrested in February 2020 and was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison in September 2022 for facilitating bribes to Anastasia Alekseyeva, an aide to Russia’s former Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich.
Alekseyeva was sentenced to 12 years this past April for accepting bribes in the form of two luxury overseas vacations. Investigators alleged that the official was expected to provide support to several pharmaceutical companies — for example, by ensuring that their weight-loss drugs were not included in the list of substances banned in Russia.
According to the Russian news agency Interfax, Spector’s 3.5-year sentence for bribery will be served concurrently with his new 15-year term.
Originally from Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), Spector moved to the United States and later became a naturalized U.S. citizen.
Dvorkovich served as deputy prime minister under Russia’s ex-president Dmitry Medvedev from 2012 to 2018 and currently heads the international chess federation, FIDE.