A senior national security official, Aleksei Dressen, along with his wife Viktoria, were detained Wednesday morning at Tallinn Airport, and are under investigation for selling classified information to the Russian Federation's intelligence service, the FSB.

The couple was detained as Dressen's wife prepared to depart on a flight to Moscow.

Allegedly, Dressen was in possession of a storage device containing classified documents when he was arrested. The official's wife is suspected of acting as a courier.

According to the charges, Dressen, 43, has in recent years sold information to the FSB in return for monetary rewards.

Dressen has been working as an investigator for KAPO, Estonia's national security agency, since 1993.

In 2009, Herman Simm, who is serving a 12.5-year prison sentence for selling classified NATO information to Russia, became the only Estonian to be convicted of treason after restitution of independence.

The case that became public today has no relation to Simm, according to the Prosecutor's Office, although in late 1990s, Dressen served with Simm on a government committee supervising trade and transit of strategic goods, headed by then minister of foreign affairs, Toomas Hendrik Ilves.

The suspicion was unveiled at a joint press conference given by KAPO and the Prosecutor's Office on Wednesday.





Ott Tammik