Australian police said Friday (12) they had arrested a former soldier and her husband, both of Russian origin and Australian citizens, for allegedly accessing “sensitive” military material with the intention of sharing it with Russian authorities.
The accused are a 40-year-old woman, who became an Australian citizen in 2016 and was a soldier in the Australian Army, and her husband, a 62-year-old self-employed worker who became an Australian citizen in 2020, according to a statement from the Australian Federal Police.
The two, who arrived in Australia more than a decade ago, were arrested on Thursday (11) at a house in the city of Brisbane, in the northeast of the country, according to the statement.
The woman, who worked for several years as an information systems technician and held an Army security clearance, and her husband were charged with preparing an act of espionage.
This is the first espionage charge in Australia since the passage of the Anti-Foreign Interference Act in 2018 and carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison.
At a news conference in the nation’s capital Canberra, Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw said the alleged Russian espionage operation “has been disrupted”, meaning it no longer poses a significant risk to national security.
“Our Five Eyes partners and the Australian government can be confident that strong links with foreign counterintelligence agencies will enable us to continue to identify and disrupt foreign espionage and interference activities,” he said.
Australian authorities allege the woman, who will appear in a Brisbane court later on Friday alongside her husband, made “undeclared” trips to Russia with and without him in 2023 during a long period when she was on leave from the military.
According to the investigation, the former soldier instructed her husband to access her official work account and directed him to access “specific” and “sensitive” military information that he sent directly to her private email account while she was in Russia, with the intention of providing it to Moscow, according to the Federal Police statement.
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