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Ex-fighter pilot accused of offering Dutch secrets to Russians

A former fighter pilot is facing a five-year prison sentence for allegedly trying to sell Dutch state secrets to the Russians for €500,000.

Chris V., a 37-year-old former F-16 captain, is accused of attempting to hand over CDs, secret documents and other information to the military attache at the embassy in The Hague.

The public prosecutor’s office (Openbare Ministerie/OM) claims V. arranged to leak the information to pay off huge personal debts which he had built up as a member of an investment scheme.

The pilot has denied any wrongdoing or being motivated by financial gain. He claims he passed information to a Belarussian general about a fatal accident at an air show in Poland in 2009 as a matter of conscience.

V. attended the show as coach of the Dutch F-16 demonstration team.

The OM has claimed that his actions were especially dangerous because of Russia and Belarus’s connections with the fomer Gadafi regime in Libya.

Prosecutor Ingrid Degeling told the court in The Hague that V. “sat eating croquettes with the Russian military attache” in Scheveningen at the same moment that the Netherlands was preparing to send fighter planes to Libya.

The military attache has not been interviewed because he is covered by diplomatic immunity.

The former pilot was allegedly on the point of emigrating to Dubai at short notice when he was arrested in March. He has been in custody ever since.

The OM has demanded a five-year jail sentence for V., who cannot be identified by his full name because of Dutch privacy laws.

His lawyer, Geert-Jan Knoops, is due to address the court on Wednesday. He has said his client is hurt by the implication that he violated the trust of his former colleagues.

Source: De Pers: OM eist 5 jaar cel tegen ex-F16-piloot

Photo by Jeffrey Pardoen