COPENHAGEN, Denmark – A Norwegian citizen has been arrested after allegedly meeting with a Russian intelligence officer at a restaurant in Oslo, the Norwegian National Bureau of Investigation said on Monday.
The man was arrested Saturday after handing over information, the agency said, adding that the alleged actions “could harm fundamental national interests.”
The Norwegian police security service did not identify the arrested individual. The man in his 50s “met with what was believed to be a Russian intelligence officer,” said Line Nyvoll Nygaard, a prosecutor for the intelligence service.
The security service said the citizen is suspected of violating a Norwegian law that carries a maximum prison term of 15 years.
“We believe that through his work he had access to information that is of interest to a foreign nation,” Nyvoll Nygaard told reporters.
The suspect’s lawyer, Marianne Darre-Naess, told the Norwegian news agency NTB that she denies her client abuse,
Norwegian media said the case was about industrial espionage.
DNV GL, in Norway, a major global classification society for ships, later confirmed that the suspect was employed by the company. DNV GL is also the largest technical consultancy for the global renewable energy and oil and gas industries.
The man was sitting for a trial before a court in Oslo that would be held behind closed doors.
Prime Minister Erna Solberg said she had been aware of the case.
Norway’s most notorious spy case involving Russia involves retired Norwegian border inspector Frode Berg, who was sentenced in Russia in 2019 to 14 years in prison for espionage. He was arrested in Moscow in December 2017 and accused of gathering information on Russian nuclear submarines for Norwegian intelligence.
In November 2019, he was part of a three-way spy exchange when he and two Lithuanians were released in exchange for two Russians imprisoned in Lithuania. While Berg was handed over to the Norwegian embassy in Vilnius after crossing into Lithuania, the spy exchange took place at a border checkpoint with the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.
It was unclear whether the current case was as big as the arrest in 1984 of Arne Treholt, who was convicted of treason and espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union against Norway during the Cold War and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Treholt, then head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, provided the Soviets with documents on the deployment of NATO troops and Norwegian military weaknesses, as well as confidential accounts of talks between Norwegian and world leaders.
He was released from prison in 1992 and relocated to Russia.
