Who Is Gene Spektor? Russia Arrests U.S. Man for 'Espionage'

Gene Spektor, a U.S. citizen originally from Russia, was arrested on Thursday on espionage charges, state media reported.

Spektor was formerly a Soviet citizen, per Russian business daily newspaper Kommersant, and was taken into custody by a Moscow court.

"The court granted the investigator's request to take Spektor, who is suspected of committing espionage, into custody," the Lefortovo Court of Moscow told Russia's state-run news agency Interfax on Thursday.

The details of the latest case are classified, according to Interfax, but Spektor could face up to 20 years behind bars if convicted of espionage.

Newsweek has contacted the U.S. State Department for comment via email.

Spektor, a medical inventor, had previously been convicted of bribery. He had been serving a sentence of 3.5 years for that conviction in September 2022, in which he had pleaded guilty to corruption charges.

Spektor was accused of mediating a bribe in the form of two holiday packages—to Thailand and the Dominican Republic—worth 4 million rubles ($43,000), in 2015 and 2016. The alleged recipient was Anastasiya Alekseeva, the former assistant of Russia's former Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich. Alekseeva was sentenced to 12 years in prison.

Spektor had been under arrest since February 19, 2020, according to Russian news outlet RBC. He was born and raised in Russia, and then emigrated to the United States and received American citizenship, according to local media reports. Spektor is married to a Russian woman, speaks good Russian, was born in Leningrad and had lived in St. Petersburg for the five years prior to his arrest.

The independent Russian news outlet The Moscow Times first reported in 2020 that Spektor was listed alongside three Russian nationals by the European Patent Office office as the inventors of an antibody that can be used for treating cancer.

Shortly after his initial arrest three years ago, state-run news agency RIA Novosti reported that Spektor had complained to a human-rights activist about being held in cold conditions at a pre-trial detention center.

Alexey Melnikov, executive secretary of the public monitoring commission of Moscow, said at the time that he was being held in satisfactory conditions.

"He has board games, a TV, a refrigerator, a kettle," Melnikov said, adding that Spektor's literary tastes are quite specific.

"He prefers financial literature and books about new technologies," he added.

Spektor had also told his lawyer Mikhail Ratner in September 2020 that he considered his arrest politically motivated and illegal.

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