UK man jailed for offering then-defence minister’s information to Russian ‘spies’
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Howard Phillips (left) offered the home address and phone number of then-defence minister Grant Shapps to two people he thought were Russian agents, who were in fact British undercover officers.
PHOTOS: REUTERS, FACEBOOK/GRANT SHAPPS
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- Howard Phillips was jailed for seven years for assisting a foreign intelligence service by offering Grant Shapps' information.
- Phillips offered Shapps' address and phone number to undercover officers posing as Russian spies, seeking financial gain.
- Despite Phillips' claim of trapping a foreign agent, the judge deemed him a traitor who betrayed his country for money.
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LONDON - A British man who offered then-defence minister Grant Shapps’ personal information to purported Russian spies was jailed on Nov 7 for assisting a foreign intelligence service.
Howard Phillips offered Mr Shapps’ home address and phone number to two people he believed were Russian agents using the names “Sasha” and “Dima”, who were in fact British undercover officers, prosecutors said.
The 66-year-old denied one count of engaging in conduct intended to materially assist a foreign intelligence service, claiming he was trying to “trap and expose a foreign agent”.
But he was convicted under the National Security Act in July after a trial at Winchester Crown Court.
Mr Shapps said in a statement read to the court on his behalf that he was “shocked” when he was told that his personal information had been offered to apparent foreign intelligence.
Judge Bobbie Cheema-Grubb jailed Phillips for seven years, telling him: “You were prepared to betray your country for money.”
Prosecutor Jocelyn Ledward said Phillips’ “principal motive appears to have been financial” and that there was no evidence Phillips “had any wider ideological support for Russia”.
Phillips, who had applied for a job with the UK Border Force, was in 2024 asked to say what he could offer by saving a file on USB stick and hiding it in a bicycle on a London street.
He later met “Dima” in May 2024, saying he knew Mr Shapps’ home address and telephone number and the location of his private plane as he had visited Mr Shapps’ house.
His lawyer, Mr Jeremy Dein, said Phillips had been “foolish” and was essentially a fantasist, but a life-long British patriot.
Judge Cheema-Grubb, however, said Phillips was “an intelligent man with a distorted concept of his own significance”, who had not accepted that “he was willing to behave in a dishonourable and treacherous way”. REUTERS
