Russian, Portuguese Arrested In Rome On Suspicion Of Spying

A Portuguese and a Russian were arrested in Rome over the weekend on suspicion of espionage, the European Union's judicial cooperation unit Eurojust said on May 24. Portuguese media said the arrested Portuguese citizen worked for the national SIS intelligence service and was suspected of being a double agent who was passing sensitive information about NATO and the EU to Russia. There was no official confirmation of this from either Portugal or Italy, and the two suspects were not named. The Russian embassy in Rome also declned to comment. Portugal's prosecutor-general confirmed that Lisbon had requested the twin arrests, saying in a statement that investigations suggested the Portuguese national had handed over information in exchange for money "to a foreign national supposedly linked to a foreign information service." The Hague-based Eurojust said besides the two arrests and the seizure of evidence in Italy, house searches were carried out in Portugal as part of the operation. "Espionage cases are relatively rare, and require unique solutions," Eurojust said.

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SO a Portuguese man selling NATO secrets to Russia. This will be very interesting to see what comes of this.

a reply to: defiythelie

Probably charges of spying, a trial, possible conviction and a long jail sentence at which point he might be exchanged for a spy that Russia has in custody that Europe wants back.

In other words the same scenario that we have seen since 1945 to the present. These types of things are not new and are expected.

Just saw some info where the Russian handler was operating without cover (IE not assigned as a person with diplomatic cover). This usually denotes a high level / high value source being handled by senior agents of the foreigner intelligence agency. Further the guy from Portugal was charging 10k euros per document set.

The info he was selling was high value, and his position as a senior counterintelligence agent tells us the info he was selling will be damaging.