INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
A Swedish-Russian man arrested last year in a spectacular helicopter raid on his suburban Stockholm home was charged in Sweden on Monday
with providing Western technology to Russia's military industry.Sergei Skvortsov, a 60-year-old dual national, was formally charged with
documents showed."There was a severe risk for national security interests, both in Sweden and the United States ," prosecutor Henrik Olin
told AFP, adding the implications reached even further."You only have to look at the battlefield in Ukraine to see that there's a real
need for this from the Russian military industrial complex," Olin said.Speaking to reporters, Swedish Justice Minister Gunnar Strommer
called the charges "extraordinarily serious."Skvortsov is suspected of procuring Western technology information and products that were
off-limits to Moscow due to international sanctions, and passing them on to Russia's military industry.He is accused of having ties to
Russia's military intelligence division, the GRU.According to the prosecution, Skvortsov had been acting against United States interests
since January 1, 2013, until his arrest in November 2022, and against Swedish interests since July 1, 2014.'Electronic devices'In the
indictment filed with the Stockholm district court, the prosecution accused Skvortsov of gathering, through companies he ran, "information
and the actual acquisition of various items that the Russian state and the defense forces could not acquire on the open market due to export
rules and sanctions."It accused him of "localizing the items requested by the Russian state and the armed forces, negotiating and carrying
out the purchase and further organizing the transport of the goods while concealing the actual end user."Olin told AFP the products involved
in New York in 2016 for providing Russia's "military complex" with electronic devices, and that United States authorities believe
Skvortsov took over that role from those individuals.Sweden's charge of "unlawful intelligence activities" is a notch lower than
espionage.Skvortsov, who has been held in detention since his arrest, faces up to four years in prison if found guilty.He has denied the
allegations.His lawyer, Ulrika Borg, told AFP she was prevented from speaking about the details of the case by a gag order."But what I can
say is that my client stands by what he has said throughout this entire case..
He denies any wrongdoing."The Stockholm district court said the trial would begin on Sept
25, held in part behind closed doors due to reasons of national security.Dawn raidSkvortsov and his wife were arrested in a dawn raid on
their large home in the leafy Stockholm suburb of Nacka, when two Black Hawk helicopters and an elite commando task force swooped down on
their house.His wife was later released and is no longer a suspect.The couple moved to Sweden in the 1990s and ran several import-export
companies.Among the 81 items listed as evidence in the charge sheet were computers, hard drives, USB sticks, mobile phones and documents
seized from their home.United States authorities, including the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation, helped Swedish authorities
in their investigation of the case.Just after the couple's arrest last year, Russia's Foreign Ministry said it was part of a "broader
anti-Russian hysteria in the West" and said some countries had "a real spy mania."Monday's indictment comes on the heels of another
sensational spy case in Sweden.In January, a former Swedish intelligence official of Iranian origin, Peyman Kia, was handed a life sentence
for spying for Russia for a decade and his brother was jailed for 10 years.Kia served in Sweden's intelligence service Sapo and military
intelligence units.That case is considered one of the Scandinavian country's most serious espionage affairs in history, given Kia's
access to highly classified information, which he was found guilty of gathering for Russian military intelligence from 2011 to 2021.
