Paul Whelan (security Director)

Paul Nicholas Whelan (born March 5, 1970) is a Canadian-born former United States Marine with U.S., British, Irish, and Canadian citizenship. He was arrested in Russia on December 28, 2018, and accused of spying. On June 15, 2020, he received a 16-year prison sentence.

Early life

Whelan was born on March 5, 1970, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, to British parents with Irish heritage.

Career

According to a deposition Whelan gave in 2013, he was in law enforcement from 1988 to 2000 as a police officer in Chelsea, Michigan, and a sheriff's deputy in Washtenaw County. The Chelsea Police, however, said he worked in lesser roles and as a part-time officer from 1990 to 1996, while the Washtenaw County sheriff reported no record of his employment. A former colleague said he was a patrol officer from 1998 to 2000 in the Keego Harbor police department.

He was an IT manager for the Kelly Services staffing company from 2001 to 2003, and then 2008 to 2010. From 2010 to 2016 Whelan was Kelly Services' senior manager of global security and operations.

He enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve in 1994. He took military leave from Kelly Services to serve with the Marine Corps Reserve from 2003 to 2008, including service in Iraq. He held the rank of staff sergeant with Marine Air Control Group 38 working as an administrative clerk and administrative chief, and he was part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. After a court-martial conviction in January 2008 on multiple counts "related to larceny", he was sentenced to 60 days restriction, reduction to pay grade E-4, and a bad conduct discharge. The specific charges against him included "attempted larceny, three specifications of dereliction of duty, making a false official statement, wrongfully using another's social security number, and ten specifications of making and uttering checks without having sufficient funds in his account for payment."

When arrested in Russia, Whelan was director of global security and investigations for BorgWarner, an international automotive parts manufacturer based in Michigan. His work with Kelly Services and BorgWarner gave Whelan contacts with the U.S. intelligence community, federal agents and foreign embassies.

Whelan traveled to Russia several times from 2006 and maintained an intermittent presence on a Russian language social media website, Vkontakte (VK), where he had approximately 70 contacts. He has studied Russian but communicated online using Google Translate.
He said in a deposition in 2013 that he holds a bachelor's degree in criminal justice and an MBA degree. He took courses at Northern Michigan University from fall 1988 to fall 1990 without earning a degree.

Arrest in Russia

On December 28, 2018, Whelan was arrested in the Moscow area by Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), which later confirmed his arrest. Whelan's twin brother David said Whelan arrived in Moscow on December 22 to attend the wedding of a former fellow Marine at the Hotel Metropol Moscow and to assist the groom's family members on their first visit to Russia, a country he had visited many times. He said his brother planned to return to Michigan on January 6, 2019, via Saint Petersburg.

Per '' MBK News'', an outlet run by Putin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Whelan had $80,000 in cash "temporarily confiscated" during a customs inspection at Domodedovo Airport. David said his brother entered Russia using his U.S. passport. He said his brother had not been in contact with his family. He was formally charged on January 3, 2019.

According to the Russian news agency , Whelan was apprehended in his hotel room at the Metropol Hotel while concluding a long outing with a Russian citizen, who handed him a USB drive containing "a list of all the employees at a classified security agency". The independent Latvian-based publication ''Meduza'' reported that the wedding attendees all banded close together for the duration of the holiday, and were taken aback by Whelan's decision to spend the day alone.

The BBC
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