Russian media exposes alleged longtime mole; Estonian counterintelligence to investigate latest spy revelation
The Russian media channel NTV claimed last week that Uno Puusepp, an Estonian and a former employee of the Estonian Internal Security Service (ISS), was in fact a Russian spy.
Puusepp left the ISS (Kaitsepolitsei or KaPo in Estonian) three years ago and lives in Moscow now. He was one of the few former KGB spies who were allowed to join the ISS when Estonia regained independence from the Soviet Union and formed its own counterintelligence agency.
According to Russian media, Puusepp passed secrets from NATO and the United States to Russia's federal FSB , while working at the ISS for 20 years. He resigned in 2011.
The ISS had long suspected that there was an information leak in the organization, but instead, another one of its employees, Vladimir Veitman, was caught in the investigation process. Veitman was subsequently found guilty of spying for Russia and sentenced to 15 years in prison.
NTV said that Puusepp agreed to cooperate with the Russian spy services in 1996. His alleged handler was a former KGB colleague, Nikolai Ermakov, a businessman who lived in Estonia and regularly visited Russia.
The Russian media channel said that Puusepp, who was an expert at wiretapping, revealed information about several large-scale intelligence operations from the US, Swedish and British intelligence services that passed Estonian ISS.
The information included high-level reports from the CIA, British MI5, and the German BND secret services. NTV said that thanks to Puusepp, Russian authorities knew the extent of the US National Security Agency intelligence network before the revelations from Edward Snowden.
The ISS said in response to ERR on Sunday that it will start a criminal investigation, under the section concerning treason, to verify the accusations.
Editor: S. Tambur