NEW YORK, January 27. /TASS/. A federal court in Manhattan on Monday refused to release on bail a Russian citizen Yevgeny Buryakov, who had been arrested in the Bronx earlier on the same day by FBI officers on charges of espionage.
Judge Sarah Netburn decided Buryakov, 39, could not be set free on bail since he had all the reasons to flee the U.S. She also claimed that his ‘cover’ - a job at the New York office of Russia’s Vnesheconombank, according to some media reports - “was blown”.
State lawyer Sabrina Shroff who represented Buryakov’s interested in the courtroom declined to provide any comments to TASS.
Attorney’s office in New York said on Monday Buryakov and another two Russian citizens, identified at Igor Sporyshev, 40, and Viktor Podobnyy, 27, had been gathering intelligence data for Russia and seeking access to information on new sanctions against Russian banks and the alternative sources of energy development in this country.
The attorneys claimed that all the three men were officers of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR).
Media reports suggested that Sporyshev and Podobnyy, both of them lower-rank diplomats, had left the U.S.
The data cited in the complaint the attorneys filed with the court suggested that Sporyshev had a staff member of the Russian trade mission in New York before November 2014 while Podobnyy had been an attachй at the Russian mission to the UN before September 2013.
The Russian mission to the UN, the trade mission and the Consulate General in New York declined to comment on the situation.
“We didn’t get official information /on the situation/ and as for the unofficial one, we don’t comment on it,” the press service of the embassy in Washington told TASS.
Diplomats on the embassy staff said, however, they were closely watching the developments through all the information channels available to them.