LONDON—A security guard at the British Embassy in Berlin who spied for Russia has been jailed for 13 years and two months by a judge who said his actions were, “intended to damage British interests.”
But a three-day hearing was held at the Old Bailey in central London this week to clarify on what basis Smith, 58, would be sentenced.
The prosecution claimed he was motivated by hatred for Britain and Germany and sympathy for Russia, but Smith insisted he was just acting out of spite because of a grudge over the way he had been treated by the embassy.
Justice Mark Wall told Smith on Friday he rejected the evidence he had given during that hearing and was sentencing him on the basis of the prosecution case.
Smith had a Ukrainian wife but Wall said his colleagues at the embassy had testified to “anti-British and anti-western” statements he made and he said: “They formed the opinion that you were sympathetic to Russia and President [Vladimir] Putin.”
The judge said: “Your support for Russian-backed rebels in the Donbas, who wanted a return to Russian rule, was the direct cause of your offending.”
Smith, who began passing on secret intelligence from May 2020, would take photographs of classified documents in the embassy at night when he was the lone security guard. One of these was a letter to the then Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Smith wrote anonymously to the Russian Embassy twice. The first letter, in May 2020, was compiled using Google Translate.
In one letter revealed to Major General Sergey Chukhrov the identity of a British diplomat—referred to in court only as X—who had lived in Moscow.
Russian Spymaster
But Wall said: “I’m sure that at some stage in 2020 you established regular contact with someone at the Russian embassy and they became a conduit for information that you passed on.”He said he was also convinced Smith was paid by the Russians for the intelligence he handed over. The judge said there was no evidence it was a “life-changing” amount of money but he said he believed the 800 euros found in his apartment when he was arrested was part of his payments.
Smith denied he was paid by Russia for intelligence and said cash found in his apartment was from the sale of Second World War military paraphernalia at German flea markets.
Under cross examination by prosecutor Alison Morgan, KC, he was pressed about his assertion there was no Russian spymaster who paid him for intelligence.
Morgan said: “There is a them, a them who were paying you a lot of money, that money wasn’t coming from flea markets. Your suggestion you are ashamed I suggest is just self-pitying.”
“Not at all,” he replied.
Smith, who was born in Scotland, was exposed in August 2021 by a “sting” carried out by two British intelligence agents who posed as Russian spies, Dmitry and Irina.
‘A Bit of a Slap’
Asked about his motivation for handing over documents to the Russians, Smith, who described himself as a patriotic Scot, said: “I just wanted to give the embassy a bit of a slap because I did not think that they were treating me very well.”He admitted he had an interest in online conspiracy theories and said: “Yeah, I look at David Icke and Alex Jones’s InfoWars to get an alternative view. I just like both sides of the story.”
Smith said his wife returned to Ukraine in 2018, leaving him “lonely” and “depressed.”
When COVID-19 hit Germany in the spring of 2020 a lockdown was imposed and Smith had been unable to visit his wife.
He said he would drink seven pints of beer a day and added: “The more I was on my own, the more depressed I became, and the longer it went on, the worse it got, the more I started to drink.”
“I was angry that everyone was sitting at home with full pay when we were having to go to work every day,” Smith said.
“Call that spoiled child, obstinate prat maybe. I was full of my own self-importance. I wanted to teach the embassy a lesson,” he added.
Wall said Smith’s actions had cost the British taxpayer £820,000—the cost of making changes to security within the embassy in Berlin after it had been compromised—but he said it was not up to him whether he served his sentence in a British or German prison.
After Smith was sentenced, Commander Richard Smith, who leads the Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Command, said: “Smith exploited his privileged position at the British Embassy in Berlin, in order to pass highly sensitive information to the Russian state. His activities put those working at the embassy and the security of the wider UK at significant risk.”
“However, he was identified and stopped following a carefully planned operation and investigation involving our counter terrorism officers, colleagues from the security services, and counterparts from the German police,” Smith added.
