PAUL WHELAN’S UNCONVENTIONAL life story would ultimately lead him to serving years for espionage in a Russian penal colony where he sewed clothes as punishment.
He was freed yesterday in a prisoner swap with Russia.
Whelan (54), claims to have been a former police officer. In fact he is a disgraced US marine kicked out of the military for fraud, and would go on to be a global security manager for US companies.
Whelan was born in Canada to parents from the UK who have Irish heritage – he would later move to the US State of Michigan. He holds British, American, Irish and Canadian citizenships.
On 28 December 2018, he was arrested for espionage, allegedly in possession of a USB drive full of classified documents. He has said that he believed that he was handed the device by an acquaintance and believed it contained holiday photographs.
Whelan, the Washington Post reports, claimed to have been a Sheriff Deputy in a court deposition from 2013 – serving in Washtenaw County in the city of Chelsea.
But enquiries by that paper with the department found that they had no record of his employment. The publications enquiries established that he was a part-timer. Another person they interviewed said he had worked as a patrol officer for two years in the late 1990s.
He had signed up to be a Marine Corps reservist in the mid 90s. He served twice in Iraq in 2004 and 2006 but was discharged when the Marine Corps ruled he had tried to embezzle thousands of dollars of government funds. The Washington Post reports that people said he had a fascination with Russia and learned the language while serving.
In January 2008, Whelan was convicted in a special courts martial for attempted larceny, three counts of dereliction of duty, making a false official statement, wrongfully using another person’s Social Security number and 10 counts of writing cheques that bounced.
Whelan’s sentence included a demotion and a “bad-conduct discharge”.
After that he shifted career to a corporate security job with a firm called Kelly Services which provided staffing services.
In that 2013 court deposition Whelan described his role as overseeing all security-related issues including employee misconduct investigations, managing the security of company infrastructure including buildings and computers.
He also claimed that there was work with US federal agencies such as the State Department, FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration.
When he was arrested by Russian FSB agents in December 2018 while he was visiting Russia. At the time Whelan was director of global security and investigations for an international vehicle parts manufacturer BorgWarner. The FSB is the modern version of the KGB and it handles internal national security, much like MI5 in the UK.
Whelan said he had travelled for a wedding of another US veteran. Nevertheless he claimed he got the USB drive from an acquaintance – regardless FSB detained him and he was prosecuted.
Russian authorities had claimed he had illegally taken possession of state secrets that could harm national security.
“Russia thought they caught James Bond on a spy mission; in reality, they abducted Mr Bean on holiday,” Whelan said in 2019.
He was subjected to a trial by Moscow during which he made a series of vocal protests against his detention alongside animated appeals to US officials for his release. Throughout his trial and detention, he maintained his innocence.
At one hearing, most of which were held behind closed doors, Whelan called on then-US president Donald Trump to secure his release to “keep America great”.
Washington had designated him as “wrongfully detained.”
Whelan was first held in Moscow’s infamous Lefortovo prison, which has housed Russia’s most high-profile prisoners, including Evan Gershkovich, a high profile US journalist arrested for alleged espionage. Gershkovich is employed as a reporter with the Wall Street Journal.
Whelan complained in detention that he was refused sufficient treatment for persistent health problems and that he had been injured by prison guards.
And when he was moved to an isolated penal colony in the region of Mordovia after being convicted, concerns grew over his conditions. He was tasked with sewing clothes in a prison factory in icy temperatures.
He claimed to have been assaulted by another inmate for being an American citizen and punished by prison staff for refusing an interview with state-run media RT, known as Russia Today.
From day one his family claimed, like Whelan, that their loved one wasn’t an international man of espionage.
The family told USA Today shortly after he was arrested that Whelan had not contacted them, which was “out of character for him even when he was traveling.”
“We are deeply concerned for his safety and well-being. His innocence is undoubted and we trust that his rights will be respected,” the family said at the time.
“The Russians have ruined my life. One that is destined to end in a slave labour camp, fraught with intolerable conditions,” he told his parents in December 2023, after the Kremlin announced it rejected an offer to swap him.
Whelan’s case was then overshadowed in March 2023, when the Kremlin arrested Gershkovich also on espionage charges.
Both were freed in yesterday’s prisoner exchange.
There had been plenty of false dawns – as early as 2020 he was expected to be part of a prisoner swap.
His family said he decided not to appeal the verdict, hoping instead for a speedier exchange.
But he was not included in a swap two years later when another former US marine, Trevor Reed, was released in April 2022 after being convicted of drunkenly assaulting a police officer in Moscow.
And Whelan was also left out of an exchange in December 2022, when Griner – arrested at a Moscow airport and sentenced to nine years on minor drug offences – was returned to the US in exchange for arms dealer Viktor Bout.
A US envoy who spoke to Whelan after Griner’s release said the conversation was “one of the toughest phone calls” he had ever made.
Griner vowed to lobby for Whelan’s release, and Biden said he would never give up on him.
But when Gershkovich was detained in March 2023, Whelan grew increasingly concerned he would be looked over once more.
“Paul seems rattled like never before, understandably apprehensive that the US government will choose not to bring him home again, now that there is another American wrongfully detained,” his brother said.
On Thursday those fears were finally extinguished with Whelan boarding a flight back to the US.
With reporting from AFP.
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