Vladimir Gorelikov

According to the investigation, no later than December 2009, "guided by selfish motives, he made an agreement with an unidentified representative of the People's Republic of China, who introduced himself as Zhang Yongzhi, using the Russian name "Zhenya", acting in the interests of the Ministry of State Security of the People's Republic of China, for secret co-operation, whereupon he received a task to systematically collect and transfer to representatives of the People's Republic of China information regarding the military shipbuilding of the Russian Federation, including information constituting a state secret, in particular regarding the Index of normative documents on military shipbuilding SHLIC.360021.23 part 1, compiled as of 1 January 2006, classified as “secret” and containing information constituting a state secret”. In order to fulfil the espionage assignment, acting out of selfish motives, "in January to February 2010, in the office of ZAO (CJSC) Techcom-International, located on Kamennoostrovsky Prospekt, St. Petersburg, he engaged V.E. Cherny (the criminal case was terminated on 4 December 2015 due to his death) and V.I. Nikolsky (guilty verdict was passed on 4 December 2015) in the collection and transfer of information constituting a state secret to PRC representatives. Under the espionage assignment of V.N. Gorelikov, V.I. Nikolsky and V.E. Cherny searched for persons with access to the Index by the nature of their official activities from 15 April 2010 to 28 July 2010. Up until 28 July 2010 they also engaged V.V. Tsurganov, an acquaintance of V.I. Nikolsky (guilty verdict was passed on 10 June 2014), who was the head of the 24th department of the 1st Central Research Institute of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation <...> (who had access to the Index and agreed to obtain it.) On 28 July 2010 V. Tsurganov received the Index in room No. 358 of the scientific and technical library of the 1 Central Research Institute of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation, located at 30 Chapayeva Street, St. Petersburg, and, being in his office No. 406 of the 1 Central Research Institute of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation, used a multifunctional device to copy 44 pages of the Index onto standard A4 sheets of paper". He then met Nikolsky at the metro station and gave him copies of the Index. Nikolsky scanned the document and converted it into electronic form within a few days. He referred the link to the document to Cherny, who was in Ukraine, and the latter passed the link to Gorelikov, who copied the document and saved it on a flash drive for transfer to "an unidentified PRC representative". As the court found, "over the period of time from 3 August 2010 to 1 November 2010 copies of the pages of the Index, constituting state secrets in the field of military shipbuilding, on the instructions of V.N. Gorelikov who was in an unidentified place on the territory of Ukraine, were transferred by unidentified subordinate employees to an unidentified e-mail address previously received from Zhang Yongzhi, and were placed at the disposal of representatives of a foreign state (PRC). For the espionage assignment in the interests of a foreign state (PRC), Gorelikov V.N. handed over to Cherny V.E. financial remuneration in an unspecified amount, of which Cherny V.E. handed over 70,000 roubles to Nikolsky V.I. The information contained in the documents, according to the investigation, constituted state and other secrets and was reliable at the time of sentencing. In response to a separate instruction of the investigator, the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation reported that "Zhang Yongzhi (Russian name "Zhenya") is a trained intelligence officer who engaged Gorelikov, a citizen of Ukraine, to extract secret information on military and maritime topics in the Russian Federation, who in his turn engaged Cherny and Nikolsky to extract materials on military shipbuilding. As a result, the Chinese special services obtained normative and technical documentation referred to as the Index and materials on the Project 12322 Zubr landing craft utility".