TALLINN, Estonia — An Estonian court convicted a former top security official of treason today for passing domestic and NATO secrets to Russia, the Baltic country’s biggest espionage scandal since the Cold War.
Herman Simm, the former head of security at the Estonian Defense Ministry, was sentenced to 12 years and six months in prison in a trial that was kept secret until the verdict was announced today.
The Harju County Court didn’t specify which country the 61-year-old handed the secrets to, but investigators later said he passed on nearly 3,000 documents to Russia.
“Starting from 1995 until his arrest in 2008, Herman Simm collected and forwarded classified Estonian and NATO information — hundreds of pages — to the Russian foreign intelligence service,” said Norman Aas, Estonia’s chief prosecutor. “Also, he passed on personal information on some Estonian individuals, something that may damage Estonia’s interests.”
Most of the documents concerned Estonia’s defense policy, defense systems and foreign relations, but they also included information on NATO communication systems, investigators said, adding they have been working with the alliance on the case. Estonia joined NATO in 2004.
In a brief statement, the court said Simm was also sentenced to pay $1.7 million in damages to the Estonian Defense Ministry.
Prosecutors said Simm pleaded guilty and cooperated during the investigation. In return, they didn’t seek the maximum 15-year sentence. It wasn’t immediately clear whether Simm would appeal the sentence.
Security Police chief Raivo Aeg and prosecutor Lavly Lepp said Simm, who climbed the ranks of newly independent Estonia’s police force in the early 1990s, started working for the Russian intelligence service known as SVR when he joined the Defense Ministry in 1995. However, he was believed to have had contacts with the KGB in the 1980s when Estonia was still part of the Soviet Union.
They said Simm met three or four times a year in various European countries with his SVR handlers, identified as Valery Zentsov and Sergey Jakovlev. An international arrest warrant has been issued for the latter, who is also known under a fake Portuguese identity as Jesus Amorett Graf, Aeg said.
The Kremlin has denied any involvement with Simm.
Jaanus Rahumagi, head of Parliament’s security affairs committee, said earlier this month that Simm had confessed to working with Russian intelligence for many years, even before Estonia regained independence in 1991.
“We don’t have any documents to prove that but, on the other hand, we don’t have any reason not to believe him,” Rahumagi told The Associated Press. “But one of the issues we can’t confirm is when exactly Mr. Simm was recruited. That is because documents related to this issue are located in Russia, and I’m not sure they are willing to show them to alliance members.”
Simm was arrested in September along with his wife Heete, though she was later released and recently allowed to resume work as a lawyer for a state institution.
A civil servant with a background typical of a Soviet technocrat, Simm was trained at the Interior Ministry Academy, which in the Cold War era had links with the KGB.
A year later he switched to the Defense Ministry, where he eventually became head of a security unit in 2000. That new position entrusted Simm with the sensitive task of handling top-secret data involving NATO and Estonia’s communications and surveillance systems. Simm was removed from his position in 2006.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
