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OTTAWA — A woman accused of spying for Russia says there’s nothing to the allegations because her actions ended up helping Canadian interests.

Elena Crenna is asking the Federal Court to overturn an immigration adjudicator’s decision to bar her from Canada over events more than two decades ago.

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A hearing on the matter is slated for Wednesday in Ottawa.

The spy saga began in 1994 when Canadian David Crenna hired Elena Filatova — whom he would later marry — as an interpreter and public-relations representative on a humanitarian housing project in Tver, a small city northwest of Moscow.

The initiative involved training Russians to build wood-frame homes, part of an effort to shift the former Soviet Union to a market economy.

An agent from the FSB, a Russian security agency, contacted Filatova to ask questions about the project and David gave her permission to tell the agent anything he wanted to know in the interest of transparency. Elena and the agent met about seven times over a period of years.