MOSCOW, August 17. /TASS/. Moscow’s Lefortovsky District Court has ruled that US national Gene (Yevgeny) Spector, earlier sentenced in a bribery case, should be taken into custody on espionage charges, a court official told TASS.

"The court upheld the investigation’s request that US national Spector should be taken into custody on charges based on Article 276 of the Russian Criminal Code ("Espionage")," she said.

TASS so far has no information about the substance of the charges brought against the US national.

Spector was born and raised in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), but later moved to the United States and received US citizenship. He was the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Medpolymerprom Group specializing in cancer drugs. Earlier, he was charged with mediating bribes for Anastasia Alekseyeva, a former aide to ex-Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich. According to investigators, in 2015-2016, Alekseeva received bribes amounting to more than four mln rubles ($96,300) for actions benefiting the bribe-giver, which were given in the form of vacation trips to Thailand and the Dominican Republic.