A senior Estonian scientist working for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has been found to be a spy employed by China’s military intelligence agency, according to international media March 20. The man was sentenced to three years in prison in Estonia last week.
The Estonian scientist, named TarmoKõuts, 57, has considerable name recognition in Estonia, the U.S. news site The Daily Beast reported Friday (March 19).
Aleksander Toots, deputy director of Estonia’s National Security Agency (KAPO), said Kõuts was recruited there in 2018 by the Intelligence Bureau of the Joint Staff of the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of China. Also recruited by China was an Estonian. Both were arrested by Estonian authorities on Sept. 9, 2020. The report said Kutse himself confessed to his intelligence activities for China.
Tuz said Kutse received cash payments and free trips to a number of Asian countries from the Chinese side. The Chinese side also provided him with luxury accommodation and Food from Michelin restaurants. Chinese intelligence agents contacted him on behalf of a think tank. Chinese intelligence agencies paid him more than $20,000 for his espionage activities.
Kutters received his Ph.D. in environmental physics in 1999 and later worked for several years at the Maritime Research Institute of the Tallinn Technical University in Estonia, where he conducted research in geophysics and operational oceanography. in 2002, his research team won the Estonian National Science Award.
From 2006 onwards, Kutters entered the field of defense research and was nominated as a member of the Scientific Council of the Ministry of Defense, overseeing Estonian military research and development projects. He is working at the NATO Undersea Research Center in La Spezia, Italy, in 2018 and 2020.
This center’s main focus is to conduct research in marine science. In this position, Kutters had access to classified Estonian and NATO military intelligence. He also held a state secret permit and a NATO security clearance clearance at the Time of his arrest.
While working for the Chinese military, Kutters limited his espionage activities to observing and briefly describing the high-level research he was doing and did not pass on any classified military information to the Chinese military, Tuz said.
It was because of the high level of security clearance he passed that “we decided to put an early stop to his cooperation (with China),” Tuz said.
Also according to Estonian state radio and television (ERR News), Estonian prosecutor Inna Ombler noted that Chinese intelligence agencies tend to focus on people who have access to classified information about Estonia, the EU, and its partner countries.
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