Former board member of Inter RAO Karina Turcan received 15 years in prison for espionage related to the supply of electricity to Ukraine. The defense links her persecution to the conflict with the Transnistrian authorities
The Moscow City Court sentenced Karina Turcan, a former board member of the Inter RAO state corporation, to 15 years in prison on charges of espionage. This decision was made by judge Andrei Suvorov, the press service of the Moscow City Court told RBC.
Turcan was arrested in June 2018 after at least three years of operational development, and her case has become one of the most high-profile espionage cases in Russia in recent years.
The state prosecutor Boris Loktionov (who replaced the prosecutor Amalia Ustaeva, who resigned in the middle of the trial) asked to appoint Tsurkan 18 years in prison — a term close to the maximum.
Lawyers and Turcan herself, who was briefly released from custody at the beginning of 2020, argued that the case was based on false evidence and that it could be connected with Turcan’s conflict with the Transnistrian authorities, with a “raider seizure” of her position, or with an attempt by the special services to ward off the blow from the «real» spy.
