fotokon/iStock/Thinkstock(MOSCOW) — A Manhattan banker who the U.S. says was really a secret agent for the Russian government “vehemently denies” the charges against him, according to a Russian report.
Evgeny Buryakov, who worked at the Russian bank Vnesheconombank, was arrested Monday and accused of being a “non-official cover” agent of the Russian foreign intelligence outfit SVR.
The Russian outlet TASS reported Thursday that Russian officials had been granted a consular visit to Buryakov in detention in New York.
A spokesperson for the Russian consulate general quoted by TASS said Buryakov “hopes that the lawyers, being currently selected by Vnesheconombank, will rebut unfounded and false accusations against him.” One of Buryakov’s lawyers confirmed the visit to ABC News.
Buryakov was arrested as part of an alleged spy ring that involved two other individuals, identified as Igor Sporyshev and Victor Podobnny, who had worked in the U.S. with a Russian trade delegation and with Russia’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations, respectively. The U.S. Department of Justice said those men were also undercover SVR agents, though they were not arrested because they were protected by diplomatic immunity and no longer live in the U.S.
Unlike Sporyshev and Podobnny, who had “official” covers,” as a “non-official cover” agent, or NOC, Buryakov operated in the U.S. under the guise of a private citizen.
“[I]n many cases, [NOCs] are never identified as intelligence agents by the host government,” court documents say. “As a result, a NOC is an extremely valuable intelligence asset for the SVR.”
The trio allegedly worked for Directorate ER and were tasked with stealing economic information from the U.S., including information about potential U.S.-led sanctions against Russia.
TASS itself was also embroiled in the spy scandal after court documents revealed that the Russian agents had been ordered to feed questions to an unidentified news organization for an upcoming interview. An official with knowledge of the case told ABC News the outlet was TASS, which a former CIA analyst said was long-known during the Cold War for working closely with Soviet intelligence.
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