A senior Estonian scientist working for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has been found to be a spy employed by the Chinese Communist Party‘s military intelligence agency. 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 the CCP was an Estonian. Both were arrested by Estonian authorities on Sept. 9, 2020. The report said Kurtz himself confessed to his intelligence activities for the Chinese Communist Party.
The Daily Beast quoted Tuz as saying that Kutse was recruited by military intelligence inside China and that he was “motivated by the universal weakness of human nature, the desire for money and the approval of others.”
Kurtz received cash payments and free trips to several Asian countries from the Chinese Communist Party, Tuzi said. The Chinese Communist Party also provided him with luxury accommodation and Food from Michelin restaurants. Chinese Communist Party intelligence agents contacted him on behalf of a think tank. The Chinese Communist Party intelligence agency 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 Institute of Maritime Research at 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 Communist 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 Communist military, Tuz said.
It was because of the high level of security clearance he passed, Tuz said, “that we decided to stop his cooperation (with the CCP) early.”
Tousey said it may have saved him. If he had leaked NATO secrets to the Chinese Communist Party, he would have been charged with treason. Estonian law imposes much harsher penalties for treason than the three years in prison he now receives.
Estonian prosecutor Inna Ombler said the prosecutor’s office cannot yet reveal to the outside world what specific information Kutce provided to the Chinese Communist military because court documents are not public and the criminal case is being conducted in secret, according to Estonian state radio and television (ERR News).
Ombler noted that Chinese Communist Party intelligence agencies tend to focus on people who have access to classified information about Estonia, the European Union, and its partner countries.
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