COLD WAR 2.0
Canadian-born Paul Whelan has been imprisoned in Russia for four years as a spy for U.S.

Story by National Post Staff • Sunday

Canadian-born Paul Whelan, who has been serving a 16-year jail sentence in Russia since 2020, received attention after the country released WNBA player Brittney Griner in a prisoner swap for notorious Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout .


\Former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan stands inside a defendants' cage during his verdict hearing in Moscow, Russia June 15, 2020.© Provided by National Post

The attention paid to Griner’s case has raised questions about whether her celebrity and the public pressure it generated pushed the Biden administration to make a deal where it hasn’t in other cases.

“Sadly, for totally illegitimate reasons, Russia is treating Paul’s case differently than Brittney’s,” Biden told reporters at the White House on Thursday.

Whelan, a Michigan corporate security executive, had regularly travelled to Russia until he was arrested in December 2018 in Moscow and convicted of what the U.S. government says are baseless espionage charges.
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His lawyer said Whelan was handed a flash drive that had classified information on it that he didn’t know about.

“Russia says it caught James Bond on a spy mission. In reality, they abducted Mr. Bean on holiday,” Whelan told the court on October 2019 before his sentencing.

He’s a citizen of four countries: the U.S., U.K., Irish Republic and Canada. Whelan was born in Ottawa to parents of Irish origin and moved to Michigan with his family as a child.

Whelan joined the Marine reserves in 1994 while working as a police officer. Whelan served his first two tours in Iraq in 2004 and 2006.

He was a staff sergeant in the marines until 2008, when he was dishonourably discharged. He was court marshalled on larceny charges for trying to steal $10,000, according to Reuters.

While serving in the marines, Whelan used his two-week leave to make a trip to Russia, visiting Moscow and St. Petersburg.

At the time of his arrest, he was working as the director of global security for BorgWarner, a U.S.-based auto parts supplier. The company doesn’t have facilities in Russia. Whelan’s family has said he was visiting Russia to attend the wedding of a fellow U.S. service member and a Russian woman.

He was acting as a tour guide for the wedding party, his twin brother David Whelan said.

Whelan was arrested in his room in Moscow’s Metropol Hotel on Dec. 28 by Russian state security authorities who claimed he was caught receiving a digital storage device containing a list of intelligence operators.

The timing of his arrest, which came a few weeks after Maria Butina, an alleged Russian spy, pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges in the United States.

David has described the allegation as a fabrication to BBC .

“I can’t imagine how someone with a law enforcement background who is also a former U.S. Marine, and who is now working in corporate security and is also aware of the risks of travel, would have broken any law let alone the law related to espionage,” he said.

Additional reporting from AP, The Washington Post