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The captain and a Russian attaché from the embassy in Rome met in the parking lot of a supermarket
“I did it for money. I have never put the security of the state at risk and I have never provided important information. It is true that the documents were classified as” secret “and” top secret “, but I have never presented documents that could not be found in Internet “. This is how Walter Biot, 55 year old navy frigate captain, explains his espionage for Russia.
As of March 30, the captain working in the Defense General Staff is in the Roman prison “Regina Cheli”. Shortly before that, he was arrested at the crime scene, after a parking lot on the outskirts of Rome handed over to the Russian army Dmitry Ostrukhov photographed
concerned documents
NATO security,
against which
received 5,000 euros
A day later, Alexei Nemudrov, military attaché at the Russian embassy in Rome, and attaché Ostrukhov, who failed in his Italian mission, left for Aeroflot on a flight to Moscow.
Walter Biot is accused of crimes for which he can be sentenced to 20 years in prison. However, he assures that he did everything on behalf of his family, which he could not support with a salary of 3,000 euros. Walter is the father of four children, his eldest son is 24 years old and has returned to live in the family villa in the town of Pomezia because he is unemployed. The youngest daughter of the Biot family is disabled. The captain’s wife is a psychotherapist, but due to the pandemic she was unemployed. The family also has 4 dogs. The cameras of the Italian televisions, which entered the courtyard of the house, showed a swimming pool, both cars were seen, which the family has.
Walter’s wife explained to reporters that he was wondering how to support them and that he did not want to deprive his children of gym subscriptions. In Italy, however, swimming pools and gyms have not opened for a year due to the coronary crisis. Unlike many in the private sector who lost their income, Walter Biot received his salary because he was in public service. Many now wonder how it is possible, under the guise of “maintaining a family”, to hand over the interests of their homeland to foreign intelligence in exchange for money, without thinking that they are endangering the safety of other Italian soldiers and their families.
The Corriere della Sera reported interesting details about the arrest of the captain, who had been trading military secrets for Russian spy money for at least five months. The scenes with the captain were sealed by hidden cameras from the Italian services. Walter Biot is shown sitting in front of his computer in his office at the General Staff on March 25 and
open the pages
with secret
documents. After
shoots them
with your smartphone. Take dozens of photos, remove the external memory card from your phone and put it in a medicine cabinet. The same card was found when he was arrested, but with the Russian Ostrukhov. It contains 181 photos of materials classified as “top secret”, and 47 of the files are marked as NATO secrets.
This put an end to the betrayal of the naval officer, who before reaching the General Staff, worked in the office of the Minister of Defense, boarded the aircraft carrier “Garibaldi”, where he directed various covert operations, was in military operations in the Persian Gulf and Iraq.
His recruitment for Russian interests, as well as his meetings with his Russian contacts, was carried out in a way that
worthy of a script
from a movie by
The Cold War
The two Russian soldiers from the embassy in Rome, who according to the Republika newspaper are from the GRU service, have diplomatic passports. Dmitry Ostrukhov, 44, has been in Rome since 2018. However, for months he has visited the offices of the Italian General Staff too often, which is an alarm for the Italian secret services. They realize that you may be looking for potential sources of information. The Italian captain was “targeted” at a reception at the embassy. Their financial and family problems are known.
On March 16, the Italian authorities placed cameras in the office of Biot, which is responsible for classified information on international military missions. This led to March 25, when Biot took out a Kingston external memory card from his backpack and, using his Samsung phone given to him by the Russians, took photos of documents related to the location of Italian military missions abroad, upon request. from them. and weapons, with the technologies used and their logistics.
It is also filming documents analyzing possible scenarios for NATO and allied forces. Then he takes out the box of cholesterol pills he uses. Take out two vials and replace the external memory card wrapped in the drug insert.
Researchers at the captain’s house in Pomezia
meet
4 smartphones,
delivered by
the Russians
Walter’s other Russian contact is Alexei Nemudrov, who, according to the Republic, recruited the Italian. The two have a lot in common, and Nemudrov is a 54-year-old “sailor” and has a family: a wife and two children, who always follow him around Europe during his 19-year career as a spy. . In Italy, Alexei was in the embassy from 2002 to 2005 as a naval attaché, then went to serve in Copenhagen and in 2017 returned to Rome as a military attaché.
Meetings with Walter are like a textbook for Russian spies. He never contacts by phone, everything is arranged in private. Each meeting of the two takes place in a parking lot in the south of Rome. Russian spy Dmitry for hours
roams through different
Rome points before
to get to the meeting
you are with the Italian. Take the metro to the stop in the southern district of Eur. Here you get off and take a bus to reach the suburb of Spinacheto. He starts circling to see if the ground is clear, and only then does he get into the Biot’s car when he arrived. The Italian took out of his box of cholesterol medicines the card with the saved photos. He then collects 100 folded 50 euro bills in a box. Of course, in Walter’s car, the Italian authorities had long ago installed cameras that recorded everything.
However, at their last meeting on March 30, Walter arrived at the parking lot in question in his wife’s car. People from the ROS carabinieri special unit are up close and watching. After waiting for the exchange to take place, they arrested the Italian captain, who offered no resistance. Ostrukhov tries to escape. They find the card with the photos.
Now the Italian magistrates have to find out how much money Walter Biot collected in total for the classified information sold and how many and what documents he handed over to the Russians.
In the years since the end of the Cold War, the media has not mentioned arrests by spies in Italy. The case these days with the Russian spies
dull by dust
old stories with
Bulgarian trace
The late Fulvio Martini, who was head of the Italian military intelligence SISMI, recounts them in his 1999 book. According to the former fleet admiral, they took place between 1988 and 1990. Then, the former carabinieri Paolo Dinucci, wanted by the authorities Italians, hid in Bulgaria. The fur trader Natalino Francalanci was constantly traveling to Bulgaria at the time, where he met with Dinucci, who cooperated with the Bulgarian services. Dinucci managed to hire Francalanci on the promise that this would benefit his business in Bulgaria. Francalanci agreed and put his personal acquaintances in the Italian military industry “Otto Melara” in the city of La Spezia at the service of the “mission”. She was very interested in Bulgarian services.
This is how an Otto Melara engineer was hired. However, the Italian authorities intervened and persuaded the engineer to play a double game; otherwise, he would be charged with espionage. Until now, Martini and the service he ran thought that only Bulgarians were involved in the whole thing. However, at the scheduled meeting in Sofia, where the Italian engineer would attend, a man came who introduced himself directly as a KGB agent. After months of persecution and the sending of falsified documents by the Italian authorities, the operation ended in Vienna with the arrest of Francalanci. Italian police found nothing on him.
However, during their second search, SISMI agents found two markers in his luggage. They contained microfilms that contained classified information different from that available to SISMI. In other words, the merchant played on several fronts.
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