Russian justice on Tuesday (December 29th) sentenced to 15 years in prison a former business leader in the energy sector accused of having provided confidential information to Moldova, a trial denounced by the main human rights organization. man in Russia.
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Karina Tsourkan, who was on the board of the Russian electricity firm Inter RAO, was arrested in 2018 and accused of providing Moldovan intelligence with documents in 2015 detailing Russian energy supplies to the Ukraine, including the separatist territories which are beyond Kiev's control.
The Moscow City Court sentenced the 46-year-old woman, of Russian citizenship but born in Moldova, to 15 years in prison after a closed-door trial.
In addition, 656 million rubles (approximately 7.3 million euros) belonging to Karina Tsourkan were seized and paid into the state budget.
The verdict is the latest in a long series of “
espionage
” and “
high treason
”
trials
in Russia in recent years, cases denounced by human rights organizations as trumped up.
Karina Tsourkan's lawyer, Me Ivan Pavlov, told Russian news agencies that her client intended to appeal.
The main Russian human rights organization, Memorial, in October called Tsourkan a "
political prisoner
", saying her trial was part of the authorities' efforts to "
maintain an image of Russia as a fortress besieged by its enemies
".
"
The Tsourkan affair is directly linked to the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine,
" where Moscow has been supporting pro-Russian separatists against Kiev's forces since 2014, Memorial said.
In July, the Russian security services (FSB) arrested Ivan Safronov, a well-known ex-journalist specializing in defense issues and who had recently served as an adviser to the Russian space agency Roskosmos.
Accused of having provided confidential information to the Czech intelligence services, Safronov claims his innocence, his colleagues denouncing a revenge of the FSB for his work as a reporter.
