MOSCOW. Oct 10 (Interfax) - The former journalist and Roscosmos chief's advisor Ivan Safronov had no access to the state secret, the state corporation said.
"Safronov only started working for Roscosmos in May 2020, and for a month, right up to his arrest, he worked remotely due to the Covid-19 pandemic, introduced in the spring at the Roscosmos headquarters. He had no access to a state secret," a spokesperson told Interfax on Thursday.
At a meeting with his Council for Human Rights on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Safronov had been charged with treason not for journalistic activity, but "for the period of his work as an advisor at Roscosmos and for information that he passed, as far as I know, to officers of a European special service."
Safronov, who is an advisor to the Roscosmos head, faces treason charges. He was detained on July 7 and was remanded into custody.
Roscosmos had said that his arrest had nothing to do with his current job in the corporation.
According to his defense lawyers, investigators believe that Safronov, who was allegedly recruited by a Czech special service in 2012, provided its official in 2017 with secret information on the supplies of weapons and the Russian Armed Forces' actions in the countries of Africa and the Middle East. Investigators insist that the end recipient of this secret information was the United States.
Safronov denies any wrongdoing and believes his criminal case is related to his journalistic work. Before his job at Roscosmos, Safronov worked as a journalist for the Kommersant and Vedomosti newspapers, specializing, in particular, in defense and space industries.