The CNI commander captured by the CIA was the head of the Russian area in the Spanish secret service | Spain

One of the two agents of the National Intelligence Center (CNI) arrested last September, after it was discovered that they had been captured by the CIA, was the head of a particularly sensitive area of ​​the Spanish secret service: Russia. According to sources familiar with the investigation, he is a prominent analyst, a career military man from the Navy, with a long career in the intelligence service. The arrest of the head of information on Russia caused a great shock in the CNI, which had not suffered a leak at such a high level since the Perote case, almost three decades ago. The former sailor, a veteran agent who is over 50 years old, is the only one of the two detainees who remains in preventive detention, since the other, his subordinate, was provisionally released with charges.

The sources consulted point out that, despite the fact that the United States and Spain are close allies and that the CNI and the CIA collaborate in operations against Russian espionage in Spanish territory and abroad, the US agency sought to know, beyond the information that is regularly transferred to it through official channels, what was the true degree of knowledge of Spanish intelligence about Russian networks and what ties it still maintains with Moscow. The CNI area on Russia, whose leadership was held by the detainee, had gained special relevance after the invasion of Ukraine, two years ago, which has led to the imposition of several rounds of sanctions by the EU and an increase in the colony. of Russian citizens in Spain, which now exceeds 80,000 people. In this context of a new Cold War, the murder of the Russian deserter Maxim Kuzmínov, who fled to Ukraine in a combat helicopter, took place on February 13 in Villajoyosa (Alicante), a crime that Spanish intelligence attributes to the Kremlin; or the death in strange circumstances of the Russian magnate Sergei Protosenya and his family, in April 2022 in Lloret de Mar (Girona), behind which the hand of Moscow’s secret services can also be seen.

In any case, intelligence experts explain, the capture of command of Spanish espionage was not only aimed at its current area of ​​responsibility. An operation of this type requires an approach of years, until the trust of the target is gained, they add. The until now head of the Russian area was stationed in the United States, and at the beginning of this decade he requested a leave of absence to work for a North American multinational. It is suspected that it was at this moment that the CIA was able to test him and learn about his vulnerabilities.

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Once reinstated in the CNI, the Navy officer – employed as a frigate captain, according to some sources – took charge of the Russia area, a third step in the hierarchy of the Spanish secret service. However, the interest of his recruiters was not limited to the area that he directed, but rather he sought to have a mole in the CNI from whom to request any information held by the center in the future. It was precisely, according to the same sources, the attempt to access documentation that did not correspond to his work area that set off the alarms in the security division.

The “need to know” principle operates in the CNI, whereby agents should only have access to that classified information necessary for their work. The case of Roberto Flórez – the spy accused in 2007 of appropriating secret documents to sell them to Moscow for $200,000 – led to the tightening of internal controls, which made it possible to detect improper access to secret information and motivated the opening of the internal investigation. the last summer.

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Once this was completed, the CNI filed a complaint with the Prosecutor’s Office. The head of the 22nd Court of Instruction of Madrid, to which the case corresponded, ordered the arrest in September of the head of the Russian Area and his subordinate, although the latter was provisionally released after alleging that he was limited to carrying out instructions from his superior. On the contrary, the former sailor remains in provisional detention in the Estremera prison (Madrid), which has a module reserved for members of the State Security Forces and Corps and prison officials.

The searches ordered by the judge allowed the seizure of a large volume of classified information about Russia provided to the CIA. The investigation, which remains secret, must clarify whether the command of the Spanish secret service acted guided only by gaining the favor of the US intelligence agency for their professional future, inside or outside the CNI; or if, in addition, he received large sums of money in exchange. This information could influence the agents to be accused only of a crime of revealing secrets, which article 417 of the Penal Code punishes with up to three years in prison; or with one of treason, provided for in 584, which punishes with up to 12 years in prison for “a Spaniard who, with the purpose of favoring a foreign power […] information classified as reserved or secret, likely to harm national security or national defense, is sought, falsified, rendered useless or revealed.” In 2010, the Provincial Court of Madrid sentenced Roberto Flórez to 12 years in prison for treason, although the Supreme Court reduced the sentence to nine.

The discovery that two CNI agents had been captured by the CIA caused diplomatic friction between Madrid and Washington. The Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, summoned the United States ambassador to Spain, Julissa Reynoso, to her office to convey her discomfort over an action that is considered hostile and inappropriate between allied countries. In addition to apologizing, the North American diplomat attributed the capture of the Spanish spies to a secret program from the Trump Administration that had been maintained without her knowledge.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs decided to expel three CIA agents stationed at the US Embassy in Madrid involved in recruiting CNI members, but Washington went ahead to discreetly remove them. The two governments were determined to keep the crisis quiet, to prevent it from affecting their relations. “The United States and Spain are friendly countries, partners, allies,” Robles declared when the case broke out last December. “When there are issues that may affect, they are talked about and dealt with, but that in no way influences these relationships that we have,” he added.

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