A former Twitter employee in the Middle East has been convicted of spying for the royal family in Saudi Arabia.
Ahmad Abouammo, a former Media Partnerships Manager for the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) region at Twitter, was found guilty last week of acting as a foreign agent without notice to the Attorney General, conspiracy, wire fraud, international money laundering, and falsifying records.
“The evidence at trial demonstrated that Abouammo took bribes in exchange for accessing, monitoring, and conveying the private information of Twitter users to officials of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Saudi Royal family,” the Justice Department said.
“In this position, Abouammo was responsible for protecting Twitter user information and owed Twitter his honest services. Twitter policies also required Abouammo to disclose violations of Twitter’s security policies and report gifts from those with business dealings with the company. When questioned about the access of Twitter user information and his receipt of bribes, Abouammo then lied to FBI investigators and falsified a document,” the department continued.
Abouammo, a U.S. resident who was born in Egypt, is facing a total of 30 years in prison. A sentencing hearing has not been scheduled yet.
The conviction comes after President Joe Biden’s high-stakes trip to Saudi Arabia recently where he met the Crown Prince, despite previously calling the Kingdom a “pariah” over its murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
In spying-related news, Two top Ukrainian officials have been accused of spying on behalf of Russia.
“The State Bureau of Investigations reported on July 23 that Volodymyr Sivkovych is suspected of working for the Russian intelligence services and managing a network of agents in Ukraine that spied for Russia,” the Kriv Independent reported.
Sivkovych was a former deputy secretary of the Ukrainian Security Council, while the other individual, Oleh Kulinich, was the former deputy head of Ukraine’s Security Service in Crimea. Kulinich was detained last week under suspicion of being part of the same Russian spy network.
Hundreds of Ukrainian have been rounded up recently on accusations of treason and collaboration with the enemy, a process Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has called “self-purification.”
