TALLINN, Estonia – Chinese military intelligence has recruited an Estonian civilian working at a NATO research institute focused on maritime and submarine research, The Daily Beast has learned.
The spy, Tarmo Kõuts, who is known in the Estonian scientific community for his research, was convicted last week and sentenced to three years in prison. The Baltic country’s intelligence services have warned for years about the growing Chinese threat, but the conviction was the first of its kind. So far, Estonia’s counter-intelligence service, known in the interior under its acronym KAPO, has been praised for its success in capturing spies recruited and managed by Russia.
According to Aleksander Toots, the deputy director of KAPO and Tallinn’s leading counter-intelligence official, Kõuts was recruited in 2018 by China’s intelligence bureau of the Central Military Commission’s Joint Staff Division – as Beijing’s military intelligence agency is known – together. with a suspected accomplice is yet to be heard in court. Both were arrested on September 9, 2020, without the case being made public or discussed in the Estonian media.
Kõuts pleaded guilty to carrying out intelligence activities against the Republic of Estonia on behalf of a foreign state. The charges were once short of treason. He was sentenced to three years in prison.
Kõuts was recruited in Chinese territory, says Toots, who spoke exclusively with The Daily Beast and Estonia’s Delphi newspaper: “He is motivated by traditional human weaknesses, such as money and the need for recognition.”
Toots added that Kõuts received cash payments from its Chinese handlers, as well as paid trips to various Asian countries, with luxury accommodation and dinners at Michelin-starred restaurants. The intelligence agents dealing with him were under cover of a brainstorm. Inna Ombler, the prosecutor in charge of the case, confirmed that Kõuts had earned € 17,000 – a little over $ 20,000 – for his espionage, which the Estonian government had since seized on him.
Kõuts, who received his doctorate in environmental physics in 1999, worked for many years at the Maritime Institute of the Technical University of Tallinn, where he specializes in geophysics and operational oceanography. His research led marine scientists to successfully predict a damaging winter storm with rapidly rising sea levels in Estonia in 2005. Kõuts was also part of a scientific research group that won the Estonian National Science Prize in 2002 for finding the best location for a seaport on the island of Saaremaa. Although officially designed to accept cruise ships, the port had to be able to accommodate NATO vessels.
From 2006, Kõuts became directly involved in the national defense sector. He has been appointed a member of the Estonian Ministry of Defense’s scientific committee, which oversees the country’s military research and development initiatives. As part of the secondment, he also became a member of the Scientific Committee of the NATO Research Center of NATO in La Spezia, Italy, and even served from 2018 to 2020 as Vice President of the organization, now known as the Center for Maritime Research and Experimentation (CMRE). According to its website, the CMRE “conducts relevant, modern scientific research on ocean science, modeling and simulation, acoustics and other disciplines.”
According to Kõuts’ public Facebook account, he reported in April 2018, from La Spezia, to Lerici, Italy, the year of his recruitment by China. His role in the NATO center gave Kõuts direct access to Estonia and NATO’s confidential military intelligence. At the time of his arrest, he had a state secret permit, as well as the NATO security clearance dating back fourteen years. In those three years, Kõuts has worked for Chinese military intelligence, limiting his espionage to observations and anecdotes about his work at the highest level, but according to Toots, he has not yet passed on any confidential military information.
‘That he had such security clearances was one of the reasons why we decided to stop his cooperation [with the Chinese] so early, ”Toots said. It might have saved him from a much harsher sentence that would have followed if he had been charged with treason, which he would have been if Kõuts had passed on state or NATO secrets.
The biggest espionage breach NATO has ever had was an Estonian, just four years after the Baltic state joined the military alliance. In 2008, KAPO arrested Herman Simm, the head of the Ministry of Defense’s security department. Simm’s job was to coordinate the protection of state secrets, issue security clearances and act as a liaison between the Estonian Ministry of Defense and NATO. He worked his entire term for the Russian foreign intelligence service, the SVR. Simm was sentenced to twelve and a half years in prison and had to pay € 1.3 million – $ 1.8 million at current dollar value – in damages. He was released from prison on Christmas 2019.
Since that scandal, Estonia has become one of Russia’s leading spies. “I am constantly amazed,” said Toomas Henrik Ilves, former president of Estonia. “We should be the only country the Kremlin seems interested in, because we are the only ones catching all their agents. What makes us so special? ”
Unlike other NATO members, this Baltic country tends to name and shame those it captures. It also rarely trades spies for own fixed assets. A very well-known exception to this rule was the case of Eston Kohver, a KAPO officer who was captured in 2014 by the FSB, Russia’s domestic security service, on the Estonian side of the Estonia – Russia border while he was a operation to cross the border smuggling. Kohver has been traded, Bridge of Spies-style, in 2015 for Aleksei Dressen, a Russian agent who had recruited the FSB from KAPO’s own ranks years before.
Alexander Toots oversaw both counter-intelligence investigations that led to the arrests of Simm and Dressen. And despite his pedigree to see funny agents from Estonia’s neighbor and former occupying force, Toots sees an increasing threat from the east.
For the past three years, KAPO and Välisluureamet, Estonia’s foreign intelligence service, have sounded the alarm about the growing threat of Chinese espionage. Last year, Välisluureamet warned that Estonians traveling to China are sensitive to operations and recruitment. “For this purpose, Chinese special services can use various methods and pretexts, such as making first contact or job offers via the internet. At home, Chinese special services can be almost risk-free, ”Välisluureamet explained in their annual evaluation of the security environment. Politicians, government officials and scientists who have political or defense-related permissions have been cited as possible site targets.
KAPO added that it only noticed an increase in the interest of Chinese intelligence services after Estonia joined the EU and NATO in 2004, but recently the interest has increased. The Chinese, the Estonian counter-intelligence concluded, are particularly interested in ‘decisions on global issues, whether it be the North Pole, the climate or trade’.
Tarmo Kõuts’ recruitment fits exactly into that category, as his scientific research focuses strongly on the maritime impact of climate change and has focused some of his scientific articles on the Arctic region.