Poland charges former registry employee with providing false identities for Russian spies

A man formerly employed by Warsaw city council in its registry of births, marriages and deaths was charged with espionage for allegedly providing Russia with false identities its spies could use, Polish authorities said on Thursday.

The man, identified only as Tomasz L. in line with Polish privacy laws, was indicted on charges of espionage and abuse of power, the Polish Internal Security Agency (ABW) wrote in a statement.

Authorities allege the man provided Russia with intelligence from 2017 to 2022, while he was working in the archives of the Warsaw municipality’s civil registry.

The man is believed to have copied civil records of Polish and foreign citizens, allowing foreign intelligence services to create fake identity papers for their agents abroad, according to Polish prosecutors.

"The data and documents obtained enabled foreign services to prepare legalisation documentation to build the identities of so-called illegals. He then passed this data on to a designated intelligence officer using covert radio communication. He had previously been trained in this area by Russian secret services," the National Prosecutor's Office said in a statement.

The person to whom he provided the data was an official working at the Russian Embassy, ​​who was expelled in 2022.

Tomasz L. was detained by Polish authorities in March 2022.

Tomasz L. entered a plea of not guilty and investigators said that he had initially provided testimony in the early stages of the investigation, but later exercised his right to remain silent.

According to Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita, his arrest provided authorities with information which contributed to the expulsion of Russian diplomats in the same month.

Poland expelled 45 Russians with diplomatic status accused of spying in March 2022, the country's then interior minister said.

Mariusz Kamiński said the spies were pretending to be diplomats and that Poland was "breaking up" Russian secret service agents in the country.

A number of EU countries, including Bulgaria and the Baltic states, had recently expelled Russian diplomats that they accused of spying.

Polish authorities have accused dozens of individuals of espionage or sabotage on behalf of Moscow since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine started in 2022.