Russian Supreme Court To Reconsider Case Of Valentin Moiseyev Charged With Spying For South Korea

The criminal board of the Russian Supreme Court will reconsider the case of Valentin Moiseyev charged with spying for South Korea, on January 9. The Court will consider the appeals of Moiseyev's lawyers disputing the decision of the Moscow City Court to sentence the former diplomat to 4.5 years in prison. It's the second time Russian judges consider Moiseyev's case. In December 1999, the former diplomat was sentenced to a 12-year prison term /the minimum term for violating Article #275 "Treason in the Form of Espionage" of the Russian Criminal Code./ In July 2000, the Russian Supreme Court canceled this sentence and ruled to start a repeated trial. On August 14, 2001, a new panel of the Moscow City Court issued another sentence taking into account "the poor state of health of the Defendant, good references from the place of employment and lack of previous convictions." At the same time, the new panel reaffirmed that evidence submitted by investigators of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) "proves that Valentin Moiseyev has passed to the South Korean intelligence (the Agency for National Security Planning or ANSP) unclassified information and office-use documents, many of which contained state secrets." The 52-year-old diplomat was arrested by FSB officers on July 4, 1998, in his own apartment after a meeting with an active South Korean intelligence agent. The investigation into the case has determined that Moiseyev was recruited during his business trip to this country in 1992-1994 and continued cooperating with South Korean agents having returned back to Moscow. The documents passed by Moiseyev to ANSP agents in the period from 1995 to 1997, include secret data concerning military and technical cooperation between Russia and North Korea, Russian political plans in the Northern part of the Korean Peninsula, as well as pictures of Russian high-ranking diplomats with North Korean politicians. The court have also found Moiseyev guilty for holding no less than 80 secret meetings and 60 telephone talks with Cho Song U, the official representative of the South Korean intelligence who used to be an advisor in the South Korean Embassy in Moscow. The ANSP has paid the Russian diplomat no less than $14,000 for his activities.