TALLINN, March 19 — Estonia has convicted a maritime scientist who also worked at a Nato facility of spying for China, officials and media reports said on Friday in the country’s first intelligence case not linked to Russia. Tarmo Kouts was convicted and sentenced to three years in prison by...
— Reuters picTALLINN, March 19 — Estonia has convicted a maritime scientist who also worked at a Nato facility of spying for China, officials and media reports said on Friday in the country’s first intelligence case not linked to Russia.
The court also confiscated €17,000 from the 57-year-old Kouts, a leading expert in oceanography who worked at Tallinn Technical University. But, according to the its decision published by the state gazette Riigiteataja, Kouts was found guilty of espionage and “membership of unconstitutional organisations formed to carry out activities against the Estonian Republic”.and Estonian news portalthat Kouts had been recruited by Chinese intelligence operating under the cover of a think tank in 2018 but had not revealed any state or Nato secrets by the time of his arrest last September.