Washington: A former US Army major and his anaesthesiologist wife have been criminally charged for allegedly plotting to leak highly sensitive healthcare data about military patients to Russia, the Justice Department revealed on Thursday.

The indictment alleges that after Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in February, the pair sought to assist the Russian government by providing it with data to help the Putin regime “gain insights into the medical conditions of individuals associated with the US government and military”.

Dr Anna Gabrielian.

Jamie Lee Henry, the former major who was also a doctor at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, and his wife, Dr Anna Gabrielian, were charged in an unsealed indictment in federal court in Maryland with conspiracy and wrongful disclosure of individually identifiable health information about patients at the Army base.

Although the indictment identifies Henry with the pronouns “he” and Henry used male pronouns during an initial court appearance on Thursday, in prior media interviews dating back to 2015, Henry came out as a transgender female.

Henry’s attorney David Little declined to comment on the charges, but said his client was released on home detention.

An attorney for Gabrielian could not immediately be reached for comment.

Jamie Lee Henry.

The couple met with someone they believed was a Russian official but was in fact an FBI undercover agent, the indictment says.

At a hotel in Baltimore on August 17, Gabrielian told the undercover agent “she was motivated by patriotism toward Russia to provide any assistance she could to Russia, even if it meant being fired or going to jail,” the indictment says.

In the meeting, she volunteered to bring her husband into the scheme, saying Henry had information about military training the United States had provided to Ukraine, among other things.

At another meeting later that day, Henry told the undercover agent he too was committed to Russia, and said he had even contemplated volunteering to join the Russian army.

“The way I am viewing what is going on in Ukraine now, is that the United States is using Ukrainians as a proxy for their own hatred toward Russia,” Henry told the agent, according to prosecutors.

The agent in turn urged them to read a book called Inside the Aquarium: The Making of a Top Soviet Spy, telling the pair it would help them understand what they were about to do.

“It’s the mentality of sacrificing everything … and loyalty in you from day one,” the agent said. “That’s not something you walked away from.”

Henry had some reservations about providing healthcare data, saying it would violate US health law, according to the indictment, but Gabrielian had no hesitations.

In a subsequent August 24 meeting, she told the agent her husband was a “coward” to be concerned about violating the US health laws but she broke the law “all the time” and would ensure they could provide Russia with access to medical records from Fort Bragg patients.

By the end of the month, she had handed over information on current and former military officials and their spouses, the indictment says.

The spying charges come as a Russian billionaire and three associates were criminally charged in New York on Thursday with conspiring to violate US sanctions and plotting to ensure his child was born in the United States.

Russian metals magnate Oleg Deripaska.Credit:AP

The Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, 52, has faced economic sanctions since 2018, when he was designated for them by the US Treasury Department, which said he had acted for or on behalf of a senior Russian official and had operated in the energy sector of the Russian economy.

Andrew C. Adams, a Manhattan federal prosecutor who heads a task force pursuing crimes by Russian oligarchs, said in a release that Deripaska had lied and evaded US sanctions as he sought to benefit from life in America “despite his cozy ties with the Kremlin and his vast wealth acquired through ties to a corrupt regime”.

“The hypocrisy in seeking comfort and citizenship in the United States, while enjoying the fruits of a ruthless, anti-democratic regime, is striking,” Adams said. “That Deripaska practiced that hypocrisy through lies and criminal sanctions evasion has made him a fugitive from the country he so desperately wished to exploit.”

Only Olga Shriki, 42, of Jersey City, New Jersey, was arrested. Federal authorities said Shriki, a US citizen, tried to help another woman charged in the case — Ekaterina Olegovna Voronina, 33, of Russia — to get into the United States to give birth to Deripaska’s child.

An indictment said a third woman charged in the case — Natalia Bardakova, 45, of Russia — often directed Shriki to engage in illegal transactions on Deripaska’s behalf. It said she also told Shriki to send flowers and gifts to a US television host, flowers to a then-former Canadian Parliament member and flowers to Voronina when she was in the United States to give birth in 2020.

Besides being charged with conspiring to violate US sanctions, Shriki was also charged with obstruction of justice after authorities said she deleted electronic records after receiving a grand jury subpoena requiring that the records be produced. Shriki was released on $US2 million bail. Her lawyer, Bruce Maffeo, declined comment.

Authorities said Deripaska spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to make it possible for his child to be born in the United States so the child could take advantage of the US health care system and benefits of a US birthright. The child, upon birth, received US citizenship.

Following the birth, Deripaska’s three co-defendants conspired to conceal the name of the child’s true father by slightly misspelling the child’s last name, the indictment said.

The indictment said Deripaska counseled Voronina to be “careful” ahead of interviews with US immigration authorities when she applied for a US visa for a purported 10-day tourism visit that was actually a plot to stay for six months to give birth to Deripaska’s child. It said a plot for her to have a second child in the US this year failed.

According to the indictment, Deripaska was the owner and controller of Basic Element Limited, a private investment and management company used to advance his various business interests.

The indictment included demands that Deripaska and his codefendants forfeit luxury assets in the United States – including a Washington, D.C. property and two Manhattan properties.

Reuters, AP

Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for the weekly What in the World newsletter here.

Most Viewed in World

From our partners

Source: Read Full Article