The captain and a Russian attache from the embassy in Rome met in a supermarket parking lot
“I did it for money. I have never put state security 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 submitted documents that could not be found on the Internet. ” This is how 55-year-old Walter Biot, captain of the frigate in the navy, explains his spying for Russia.
As of March 30, the captain working at the General Staff of the Defense 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 military Dmitry Ostrukhov photographed
documents concerning
NATO security,
against which
received 5,000 euros
A day later, Alexei Nemudrov, a military attache at the Russian embassy in Rome, and attache Ostrukhov, who had 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 claims that he did everything in the name 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 had no job. The family also has 4 dogs. The cameras of the Italian televisions, which entered the yard of the house, showed a swimming pool, both cars, which the family has, were seen.
Walter’s wife explained to reporters that he was wondering how to support them and did not want to deprive his children of fitness club subscriptions. In Italy, however, swimming pools and gyms have been closed for a year now 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 are now wondering how it is possible, with the excuse of “supporting a family,” to hand over the interests of your homeland to foreign intelligence for money, without thinking that you are jeopardizing the security of other Italian soldiers and their families.
The Corriere della Sera newspaper reported interesting details about the arrest of the captain, who had been trading military secrets for money from Russian spies for at least five months. The scenes with the captain were sealed by hidden cameras of the Italian services. They show Walter Biot sitting in front of his computer in his office at the General Staff on March 25 and
opens the pages
with secret
documents. After
it shoots them
with your smartphone. He takes dozens of pictures, removes the external memory card from his phone and puts it in a medicine box. 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 NATO secret.
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 managed various covert operations, was on military operations in the Persian Gulf and Iraq.
His recruitment for Russian interests, as well as his meetings with his Russian contacts, took place in a way that
worthy of a script
of a movie from
The Cold War
The two Russian servicemen 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 now he has been visiting the offices of the Italian General Staff too often, which is an alarm for the Italian secret services. They realize that he may be casting for potential sources of information. The Italian captain was “targeted” at a reception at the embassy. His financial and family problems are known.
On March 16, Italian authorities placed cameras in Biot’s office, which is responsible for classified information on international military missions. This led to March 25, when Biot took a Kingston external memory card from his backpack and, using his Samsung phone given to him by the Russians, took pictures of documents related to the location of Italian military missions abroad, at their request. for equipment and armament, with the used technologies and their logistics.
He is also filming documents analyzing possible scenarios for NATO and Allied forces. He then pulls out the box of cholesterol pills he uses. He pulls out two blisters and replaces the external memory card wrapped in the medicine leaflet.
At the captain’s home in Pomezia investigators
find
4 smartphones,
delivered by
the Russians
Walter’s other Russian contact is Alexei Nemudrov, who, according to Republika, recruited the Italian. The two have a lot in common – Nemudrov is a “sailor”, and he is 54 years old, and he 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 at 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 attache.
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 southern Rome. Russian spy Dmitry for hours
wanders around different
points of Rome before
to get to the meeting
you are with the Italian. It takes the metro to the stop in the southern Eur district. Here he gets off and takes a bus to reach the suburb of Spinacheto. He starts to go around to see if the terrain is clean, and only then enters the car of the arrived Biot. The Italian took out of his box of cholesterol medicine the card with the saved photos. He then collects 100 50-euro banknotes folded in a box. Of course, in Walter’s car, the Italian authorities had long ago installed cameras that recorded everything.
At his last meeting on March 30, however, Walter arrived in the parking lot in question in his wife’s car. People from the ROS carabinieri special unit are nearby 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 map with the photos in it.
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, spy arrests in Italy have not been mentioned in the media. The case of these days with the Russian spies
dulled by the dust
old stories with
Bulgarian trace
The late Fulvio Martini, who was head of the Italian military intelligence SISMI, tells about them in his book in 1999. According to the former admiral of the fleet, they took place between 1988 and 1990. Then the former carabinieri Paolo Dinucci, wanted by the Italian authorities, hid in Bulgaria. The fur trader Natalino Francalanci was constantly traveling to Bulgaria at that time, where he met with Dinucci, who cooperated with the Bulgarian services. Dinucci managed to recruit Francalanci with the promise that this would benefit his business in Bulgaria. Francalanci agreed and placed in the service of the “mission” his personal acquaintances in the Italian military industry “Otto Melara” in the city of La Spezia. She was very interested in the Bulgarian services.
This is how an engineer from Otto Melara was recruited. However, the Italian authorities intervened and persuaded the engineer to play a double game – otherwise he would be accused of espionage. Until now, Martini and the service he led thought that only Bulgarians were involved in the whole affair. However, a man who introduced himself as a KGB agent came to the scheduled meeting in Sofia, where the Italian engineer was to go. After months of persecution and the sending of documents forged by the Italian authorities, the operation ended in Vienna with the arrest of Francalanci. Italian police found nothing in him.
However, during his second search, SISMI agents found two felt-tip pens in his luggage. They contained microfilms containing classified information other than that available to SISMI. In other words, the merchant played on several fronts.
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