MOSCOW, February 1 (RIA Novosti) - A Canadian naval officer on a court trial under espionage charges received almost $72,000 for passing classified information to the Russian military, Canada’s CBC television network reported citing prosecution.
Sub-Lieutenant Jeffrey Paul Delisle, who served at a Canadian naval intelligence center in Halifax, was arrested in January 2012. Last October he pleaded guilty to charges pressed against him.
Federal Crown attorney Lyne Decarie said that between 2007 and 2011 Delisle received from the Russian military a total of 23 financial tranches that amounted to the eventual sum of $71,817.
The verdict in Delisle’s case will be brought after the two-day court hearings, which began in Halifax on Thursday. The charges were brought under the information security law adopted in December 2001 after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States. If Delisle is found guilty, he faces life in prison.
According to prosecutors, Delisle provided his Russian handlers with material downloaded from the computer system at the HMCS Trinity intelligence facility, which shares information with intelligence communities.
Delisle’s Russian handlers, according to the prosecution, paid him $3,000 a month for the information, which was mainly military intelligence but also included reports on organized crime as well as personal information on politicians and senior members of the intelligence community.
He came under suspicion in the fall of 2011 after Canadian customs officials found that he had returned from a four-day trip to Brazil with $10,000 in cash and $40,000 in prepaid debit cards, which he had in fact received from a Russian contact in Rio de Janeiro, according to the allegations.
