The life of a simple Russian spy in New York

Photo: ice.gov

American edition of Bloomberg published his own investigation of the intelligence officer hails from the village of Kuschevskaya Evgenia Buryakov, who in May last year received a prison sentence of 2,5 in the United States for collecting secret information.

In early April of this year, as писал ForumDaily, the Russian spy Buryakov was prematurely released from prison in the United States.

Портал Yuga.ru tells that journalist Garrett M. Graff managed to find out about the Russian spy.

“Evgeny Buryakov woke up in a snowstorm. On the morning of January 26, 2015, his modest brick house in the Bronx began to be covered with snow, and Buryakov, deputy representative of Vnesheconombank in New York, decided not to go to work, but to run to the grocery store around the corner and buy food for his family of 4 people . When the 39-year-old Russian put on his winter clothes and closed the door behind him, he did not yet know that he would never return home,” Bloomberg describes the day that radically changed the life of Buryakov.

Buryakov and his family arrived in New York in August 2010. They seemed like ordinary immigrants in America’s smelting pot. “Eugene is a man of medium height and medium build, perhaps his only curious feature is an almost manic passion for McDonalds. In good weather, the children played in the sandbox in the backyard, next to the ropes, on which their mother, Marina, liked to hang out the washed clothes. While Eugene traveled to his office on the 29 floor of the Manhattan high-rise, Marina took the children to a parish school nearby and after-school sports sections, such as karate. Two neighbor-nuns looked after the Buryakov parrot when they left to ski, ”writes journalist Graff. It would seem nothing remarkable, ordinary people from Russia.

But Eugene lived a double life. His main employer was not a bank, but the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) of Russia. On Wall Street, Buryakov elicited the corporate and financial secrets of various companies and passed them on to Moscow. Two of his colleagues, also under cover, worked with people who informed them about consulting and other firms. Often the informants did not suspect that they were pouring information to foreign agents.

“Once upon a time, the world capital of espionage was Berlin - a place where East and West met, and where undercover agents from the KGB, CIA, MI-6 and other agencies, whose names were not publicized, practiced their skills under the shadow of the Berlin Wall.

But after the end of the Cold War, the situation has changed - and it seems that the epicenter of intelligence has shifted to New York.

Various permanent missions and delegations to the UN, among which even those countries that are otherwise prohibited from entering the US, visit New York. Additional pretexts for extracting information appeared on Wall Street with its maelstrom of networking events and investor conferences. ”

FBI’s Maria Richie chased Russian spies across the east coast of the United States. After graduating from the English department at a university in Colombia and having worked as a lawyer for a while, she joined the FBI 15 years ago, in a counterintelligence unit. Her first case was called Operation "Ghost Stories" (Operation Ghost Stories). Richie and other agents almost 10 years tracked Russian illegal immigrants throughout the United States. This was the largest espionage case in the history of the FBI. The investigation ended in 2010 year - 10 arrested Russian intelligence officers. Among them was, as writes Bloomberg, "The sultry red-haired Anna Chapman, who instantly became a tabloid star."

After this story, the popular cable channel FX filmed the TV series “Americans”, which became a hit. The main characters of the series are 2 Soviet KGB officers who live in Washington on 1980 and pretend to be American citizens.

Foreign diplomats regularly travel to the United States, and the FBI’s first entry checks their profiles to figure out potential spies. Having discovered something suspicious, the agents immediately find a way to expel such a person from the country. The FBI sounded the alarm when, in November, 2010 arrived in New York, Igor Sporyshev, the trade representative of the Russian Federation. The reason for the alarm was that his father Mikhail was a major general of the KGB.

In 2011, Sporyshev attended an ordinary energy conference in New York, as the FBI agent did, posing as an analyst for Wall Street. The Russian introduced himself, they talked amiably and exchanged business cards.

“The Russians are incredibly good for whatever they do,” says Richie. “And they are on their guard with anyone who speaks English.” It’s much easier to make them trust you if they were the first to get closer. ”

Agents continued to communicate, and Sporyshev pushed, as he thought, the analyst, to disclose important information, for example, financial and strategic planning documents. In fact, the data that Sporyshev asked for were not even classified. "Most likely, this request reflects the approach of the Russians to intelligence, which has been preserved since the days of the Cold War," Bloomberg.

“As people from the traditionally closed society where the media work as a continuation of the state, Russian agents, as a rule, give priority to working with people and discard a huge amount of open sources - news and all the information that flows from government reports, independent articles and analyzes of research centers. "Whispers are always sexier," says Richie. Relationships begin innocently, with employees of the junior or middle managers. They can be maintained for years, as long as the goal becomes a big boss and then it will not pay attention to what it shares with what it seems to be a long-time friend. ”

An FBI undercover agent gave Sporyshev his allegedly confidential corporate records in folders that were equipped with recording devices. The agent warned Sporyshev that the documents needed to be returned - otherwise there would be a lack of them at work.

The first folders with bugs began to return to the FBI, and linguists began to translate from Russian. It turned out that the trick worked even better than the FBI imagined. Rudely violating the safety rules, Sporyshev brought bugs to the office of the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation, the residency and the Russian UN office on ul. 67 East is a zone in which there should not be any listening devices. “None of what he received from anyone in the US, under any circumstances, can be carried to these institutions,” says Richie.

During the 7 months, folders one after another were in Sporyshev’s hands, and the FBI collected hundreds of hours of recordings of conversations, most of which turned out to be commonplace. Sporyshev talked for hours with his colleague, Viktor Podkolny, a young man from 20 for a short time, who also worked under diplomatic cover as an attache of the Russian UN mission. Both were part of the branch office of the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation, which deals with economic issues, such as trade and production. They complained to each other how boring they were.

"The fact that I am now sitting with cookies in my hand right ... with the enemy under my nose is the same *** (wow)!", Said Similar in April 2013. Of course, he understood that one should not expect adventures, as in the James Bond films, but he hoped that the work would be more interesting than to shift the papers on the table.

"Of course, I will not fly helicopters," said Like, "but at least pretend to be someone else." Sporyshev agreed: "I also thought that, at a minimum, I would go abroad on a fake passport."

Out of the long whining hours, one thing stood out: an indirect reference to an undercover employee on Wall Street. FBI agents understood that Sporyshev and Like spoke of Buryakov. The imaginary bank analyst has already appeared on the FBI radar, but then the bureau did not consider him a spy.

“The son of a state construction engineer, Buryakov grew up in a small settlement in the south of Russia - the village of Kushchevskaya. In 1994, he met fellow villager Marina, who was then in high school. They got married in 1999. Smart and inquisitive, Buryakov was gifted in learning foreign languages. He worked in Moscow first as a tax inspector, and then got a job at Vnesheconombank. At some point, Buryakov ended up in the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation. After working for 5 years at the Vnesheconombank branch in South Africa, he arrived in the United States just a few weeks after the FBI completed the operation.Stories about ghosts". He was the first of a new wave of Russian intelligence officers."

Buryakov, his wife and 2 children, Pavel and Polina, rented an 2-storey house for $ 3 thousands per month on Leibig Avenue Rivaldalee. American counterintelligence knows this area of ​​the Bronx well. From the roadway next to the house Buryakova visible cream-colored high-rise. This building, built for the staff of the Russian Mission to the UN and occupies the territory of 2,5 ha.

The Bronx became a favorite area of ​​diplomats and immigrants from Eastern Europe precisely because of this building. Sporyshev lived right around the corner. The Buryakovs kept aloof, but neighbors' nuns often saw Eugene smoking on the street late at night, and mothers from the school came to Marina.

By day, Buryakov lived the usual life of a Wall Street analyst: he read and wrote reports, participated in meetings, conferences and parties, added friends to LinkedIn.

His employer, Vnesheconombank, occupied a profitable niche in the global banking network. The public-private structure of the bank allowed Buryakov to move freely in government, corporate and non-governmental organizations without arousing suspicion. No one had any idea that they were talking to an intelligence officer. (Alexander Slepnev, head of VEB’s New York office, did not respond to requests Bloomberg about comments).

Sporyshev, being a colleague of Buryakov, often gave him small side projects. For example, in May, 2013 asked him to prepare questions that the TASS news agency would be able to use when interviewing an official at the New York Stock Exchange. Buryakov conducted a 20-minute study and recommended asking about exchange-traded funds.

“Buryakov participated in a multibillion-dollar aerospace deal when a Canadian engineering company Bombardier planned to merge with Rostec, a Russian state corporation that produces military products. Taking advantage of his position at the bank, Buryakov traveled to Canada twice, in 2012 and 2013, to participate in meetings and conferences regarding the proposed agreement. But Canadian trade unions opposed the construction of foreign production facilities, and Buryakov sent a report to the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service. According to Sporyshev, he proposed “to put pressure on the trade unions and ensure that a decision is made that is beneficial to us.” Yes, this is unworthy of agent 007. But it helped Russia achieve a lucrative contract. However, the agreement was frozen after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.”

As Buryakov performed such tasks, the FBI increasingly monitored him. The agents secretly searched his office several times in the bank.

In December, 2013, Gregory Monaghan - an investigator of the counterintelligence department at the FBI in New York - met with the owner of the house who was filming Buryakov, and asked for permission to go inside. The owner agreed, and while the Buryakov family left to ski, FBI agents snuck into the house and installed audio and video surveillance. Over the next few months, the FBI heard more than 4 dozens of meetings of Buryakov with his staff.

Photo © fbi.gov

Sporyshev and Similar were found to have tried to recruit various Wall Street employees: consultants, analysts and other financiers who have access to classified information or documents, or those who can access in the long run. The Russian special services showed incredible patience - they worked according to long-term schemes. The agents first asked about something harmless, and no one could suspect that one day it would drain the important information to the spy.

Similar gave Sporyshev the content of the conversation with a recent graduate of the university. Similar told her that he “needs answers to some questions that are not in the public domain. Therefore, he searches for data in paid editions and asks for the opinions of independent people who discuss this topic among themselves behind closed doors. ” The woman willingly agreed to help.

Similar also met a financial consultant at an energy symposium. The consultant often traveled to Moscow and was keenly interested in cooperation with Gazprom. “It’s obvious that he wants to earn a lot,” Podobny Sporyshev said. “Now his enthusiasm is working for me.” “I promised him everything: that I have connections in the trade mission, which means you will be able to push through contracts,” Podobny laughed. “I’ll feed him breakfast.”

Richie explains that in New York, connecting informants in this way is a successful and common practice. Americans regularly become involuntary agents, helping with intelligence advice and not knowing who they are dealing with.

“When the Russians come, they don’t say:“ Hi, I’m a spy, ”says Richie. “They say," Hello, friend, you can help, tell me something. "

Buryakov searched and established contacts in New York with potential sources of information and compiled lists of people who were then recruited by other intelligence officers. “This is not just information theft. This is theft of yourself, says Richie. “You become a bookmark in a notebook, which they can use if necessary.”

Or, as Sporyshev put it: “Cheating is an intelligence method. How else to work with foreigners? You promise quid pro quo. You receive the documents and send it *** (far away). “But so that you don’t get upset, I’ll take you to a restaurant and make a great gift.” This is the perfect way to work. ”

In the middle of 2014, the FBI agents concluded that they had enough evidence to detain Buryakov, but decided to go further - to prepare the final episode, which documents the full cycle of recruiting foreign spies on Wall Street, from the first contact to the transfer of secret documents. The FBI asked a businessman from Atlantic City (his name was not disclosed) to pretend to be a rich investor who wants to open a casino in Russia and get close to Buryakov. Yevgeny mentioned the “investor” in a conversation with Sporyshev, and he noticed that it “looks like a trap.”

But Buryakov did not listen. 8 August 2014, he came to a businessman in Atlantic City and spent 7 hours with him, visiting the casino and watching the project presentations in Power point. The alleged investor gave Buryakov government documents marked “for internal use only” about people who fell under US sanctions in connection with the annexation of Crimea. Buryakov said he would like to receive more similar documents, and in the same month the source provided him with another report - this time on the Russian banking sector with the note “for official use only”. On the same day, Buryakov called Sporyshev to discuss the “textbooks” and in the evening he went home from the office to Sporyshev in the Bronx. The FBI surveillance team watched from the sidelines.

“At the end of 2014, the 5-year working contracts of Sporyshev and Buryakov ended, and they returned to Russia. The FBI tried to figure out who would take their place. “They could completely change the places of meetings and the order of communication, so we decided that we should not allow [Buryakov] to work further,” explains Richie. One of the counter-intelligence oddities is that countries tolerate known and suspected spies — they are allowed to work under what the FBI considers the all-seeing eye. “The first goal of counterintelligence is not to arrest, but to lure to your side,” says Richie. “The number one priority for me is to make sure no one steals our secrets.” This mission seems accomplished. Buryakov saw documents that the FBI allowed him to see, and besides them, he rarely got anything more significant than what any other Wall Street worker can see. ”

The FBI has scheduled an arrest on 26 on January 2015 of the year. Snow fell on the headquarters of VEB and Buryakov’s house in Riverdale, while search teams and dozens of agents waited nervously.

Buryakov went to the grocery store. After paying off, Eugene noticed agents Richie - they were waiting in the parking lot in uniform blue windbreakers. “Sir, you must come with us,” they said, and hurried to seat Buryakov in the car.

The agents later said that Buryakov was calm and hardly surprised. Other FBI officials took his purchases to his wife and reported that they had a search warrant. Agents quietly removed audio and video devices for surveillance.

By the end of the day, the US Department of Justice announced the arrest and criminal case against Buryakov. The names of Sporyshev and Similar also appeared, but both of them are protected by diplomatic immunity. In Moscow, the Russian government sent a note of protest to the US ambassador. And in New York Marina with children, leaving a family car, fled to the Russian representation of the United Nations and remained there until she could leave the country. Colleagues Buryakova quickly took things out of the house in Riverdale and tried to find the FBI bugs in the house, but in vain.

Vnesheconombank paid $45 thousand to Buryakov’s landlord and his lawyer. Initially, Buryakov's defense was based on the fact that Evgeniy did not do anything that all ambitious expats in New York do not do: he simply agreed to help his compatriots, Sporyshev and Podobny. But in the end, Buryakov pleaded guilty to being an unregistered foreign agent - that is, engaged in espionage.

24 May 2016 Buryakov was sentenced to 30 months in jail in a light-duty federal prison in the small town of Lisbon, Ohio.

Read also on ForumDaily:

What are the US accusing Russian hackers

Do you want more important and interesting news about life in the USA and immigration to America? — support us donate! Also subscribe to our page Facebook. Select the “Priority in display” option and read us first. Also, don't forget to subscribe to our РєР ° РЅР ° Р »РІ Telegram  and Instagram- there is a lot of interesting things there. And join thousands of readers ForumDaily New York — there you will find a lot of interesting and positive information about life in the metropolis.