Switzerland’s Federal Department of Justice and Police (EJPD) has confirmed that authorisation has been given to the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) to initiate proceedings against Russian nationals suspected of having engaged in political espionage in Switzerland. In an email, the EJPD said that the proceedings involved ‘several Russian nationals’, but could not confirm if they concerned two individuals arrested in the Netherlands earlier this year for a planned attack on the Spiez Laboratory in Bern. In September, the OAG told AFP that the same two Russians had also been under investigation since March 2017 for a planned attack on the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

‘At the end of August, the OAG requested authorisation to bring criminal proceedings’, read a emailed statement from the EJPD. ‘The Federal Department of Justice and Police (FDJP), in consultation with the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA), has since then authorised the OAG to initiate criminal proceedings’. The EJPD said that the decision means that the OAG will now examine whether any criminal offence has been committed. 

Swiss media has reported that the two Russians who have been under investigation by the OAG since March 2017 are Aleksei Morenets and Evgenii Serebriakov. They were two of the seven Russian Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) officers indicted by the US Department of Justice (DoJ) on charges involving hacking into the computer systems of anti-doping organisations, using the monicker Fancy Bears.