Paul Whelan (security director)


Paul Nicholas Whelan is a Canadian-born American resident with British and Irish citizenship corporate security director. He received a bad conduct discharge from the US Marine Corps. He was reported to have previously worked as a police officer in Michigan. He was arrested in Russia on December 28, 2018, and accused of spying. On June 15, 2020, he received a 16-year prison sentence with the possibility of time in a labor camp.

Early life

Whelan was born in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, to British parents with Irish heritage.

Career

According to a deposition Whelan gave in 2013, he was in law enforcement from 1988 to 2000 as a police officer in Chelsea, Michigan, and a sheriff's deputy in Washtenaw County. The Chelsea Police however said he worked in lesser roles and as a part-time officer from 1990 to 1996, while the Washtenaw County sheriff reported no record of his employment. A former colleague said he was a patrol officer from 1998 to 2000 in the Keego Harbor police department.
He was an IT manager for the Kelly Services staffing company from 2001 to 2003, and then 2008 to 2010. From 2010 to 2016 Whelan was Kelly Services' senior manager of global security and operations.
He enlisted in the Marine Reserves in 1994. He took military leave from Kelly Services to serve with the Marine Corps Reserve in Iraq from 2003 to 2008. He held the rank of staff sergeant with Marine Air Control Group 38 working as an administrative clerk and administrative chief, and he was part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. After a court-martial conviction in January 2008 on multiple counts "related to larceny", He was sentenced to 60 days restriction, reduction to pay grade E-4, and a bad conduct discharge. The specific charges against him included attempting to steal more than $10,000 in 2006 in Iraq and using a false Social Security number to create a false account on a government computer system to grade his own examinations.
When arrested in Russia, Whelan was director of global security and investigations for BorgWarner, an international automotive parts manufacturer based in Michigan. His work with Kelly Services and BorgWarner gave Whelan contacts with law enforcement in many countries.
Whelan traveled to Russia several times from 2006 and maintained an intermittent presence on a Russian language social media website, Vkontakte, where he had approximately 70 contacts. He has studied Russian but communicated online using Google Translate. Whelan supported US President Donald Trump and, after Trump's 2016 election victory, Whelan posted in Russian Президент Трамп Вперед!!.
Whelan holds a federal firearms dealer license registered with the trade name Kingsmead Arsenal.
He said in a deposition in 2013 that he holds a bachelor's degree in criminal justice and an MBA degree. He falsely claimed a BA from the University of Michigan in his profile on Russian social media. He took courses at Northern Michigan University from fall 1988 to fall 1990 without earning a degree.

Arrest in Russia

On December 28, 2018, Whelan was arrested in the Moscow area by the Russian Federal Security Service, which later confirmed his arrest. Whelan's twin brother David said Paul Whelan arrived in Moscow on December 22 to attend the wedding of a former fellow Marine at the Hotel Metropol Moscow and to assist the groom's family members on their first visit to Russia, a country Paul Whelan has visited many times. He said his brother planned to return to Michigan on January 6 via Saint Petersburg. Per MBK News, an outlet run by longtime prisoner of conscience, exiled renowned Putin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Whelan had $80,000 USD in cash "temporarily confiscated" during a customs inspection at Domodedovo Airport. According to the New York Times, Whelan had acted as a local guide for the wedding guests, but had decided to spend the day of the wedding to meet a friend, per the account of other attendees. David said his brother entered Russia using his U.S. passport. He said his brother had not been in contact with his family. He was formally charged on January 3.
According to the Russian News Agency Rosbalt, Whelan was apprehended in his hotel room at the Metropol while concluding a long outing with a Russian citizen, who handed him a USB drive containing "a list of all the employees at a classified security agency". The independent, regime-critical, Latvian-based publication Meduza reported that the wedding attendees all banded close together for the duration of the holiday, and were taken aback by Whelan's decision to spend the day alone. Furthermore, according to Meduza, Whelan allegedly had prior acquaintance with the FSB employee, and knew of his place of work. The British Broadcasting Corporation cited family members of Whelan, who said Whelan previously bragged about knowing an agent of the FSB, and was privy to an unusual cache of personal details about his friend, including which intelligence training school he attended.
As Paul Whelan said about the arrest, his long-time friend had appeared suddenly in hotel, followed by authorities, who later arrested him.
According to the lawyers, they could not call the name of the Russian long-time friend, who planted memory card in Paul Whelan room in the hotel due to Russian secrecy rules, but Paul Whelan family identified the person as Ilya Yatsenko, whom Russian paper Kommersant called as a major in the FSB's Department "K", that monitoring Russian economic crimes.
Whelan was being held in Moscow's Lefortovo Prison. As of March 2019, he shared a cell with another prisoner who spoke no English.
Former CIA officers have stated that the CIA would not recruit an officer with Whelan's military record, nor leave an officer exposed without a diplomatic passport. They further claim that Whelan's arrest is connected to tensions between Russia and the United States, including the detention of confessed unregistered foreign agent Maria Butina. On December 20, 2018, when discussing Butina's arrest, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that Russia "will not arrest innocent people simply to exchange them".
U.S. Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman Jr. met with Whelan on January 2, while Whelan was in Russian custody. He told Whelan's family that Paul was "in good health and good spirits", but that the family needed to supply all his incidental needs aside from basic foodstuffs. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said: "We've made clear to the Russians our expectation that we will learn more about the charges, come to understand what it is he's been accused of and if the detention is not appropriate, we will demand his immediate return." On January 4, British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said: "We don't agree with individuals being used in diplomatic chess games... We are all extremely worried about him and his family." As of January 4, British and Irish consular officials were seeking access to Whelan.
On January 3, Whelan's attorney, Vladimir Zherebenko, said he was seeking his release on bail. He said a trial would not begin for at least six months, and that he would welcome an exchange of Whelan for Butina. He said: "I presume that he is innocent because, for now, I haven’t seen any evidence against him that would prove otherwise." More than a fortnight later, Zherebenkov said Whelan had been unaware of the contents of the USB stick and believed it contained material solely of personal value such as "photographs, videos, anything at all, about his previous holiday in Russia."
On January 5, the Russian Foreign Ministry said that on the day after Whelan's arrest the United States had detained a Russian citizen, Dmitry Makarenko, in the Northern Marianas and transported him to Florida to face charges of unauthorized export of defense equipment.

Conviction and sentencing

On June 15, 2020, Whelan was convicted and sentenced to sixteen years in a Russian prison for espionage by a court in Moscow. His lawyers said they believed Russia would now seek a prisoner swap.
Paul Whelan said in court that all the case was a sham to use him to influence the USA: "We have proven my innocence... we have proven fabrication. This is slimy, greasy corrupt Russian politics, nothing more, nothing less."

Personal life

Whelan is a citizen of Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Ireland. His twin brother David ascribed Paul's acquisition of the passports to "probably a genealogical interest as much as anything".
Paul Whelan has never married and was raised in the Ann Arbor area of Michigan where he and his twin brother David graduated from Huron High School in 1988. David said the family had not known Paul had a bad conduct discharge. In addition to his twin brother, Paul Whelan has a brother Andrew and a sister Elizabeth.
Paul Whelan lived in Novi, Michigan prior to detainment in Russia.