A Riga court on Thursday sentenced former Latvian Interior Minister Janis Adamsons and his accomplice Gennadiy Silonov to eight and a half and seven and a half years in prison, respectively, for spying for the Russian special services, AFP reports.

“Adamsons collected classified and unclassified information on behalf of the Russian Secret Service (FSB) in an illegal, systematic and targeted manner,” Judge Erlens Ernstsons said after the verdict.

Having served as home secretary in 1994 and 1995, Janice Adamsons, now 67, served six terms in parliament until 2021, the year he was arrested.

From 1979 to 1992, he served in the USSR Navy as a political engineer. After returning to Latvia, he joined the Latvian Navy, which was rebuilt from scratch after 50 years of Soviet occupation, before becoming Deputy Chief of the Navy and Acting Chief of the Border Guard Brigade.

Russian citizen Gennady Silonov, a former KGB officer in the 1980s, gathered the information passed on by Janice Adamsons during about forty meetings over four years, according to news site Pietiek.com.

Silonov was a KGB personnel officer until 1991, when the Moscow secret service was banned by Latvia.

Adamsons was not interested in working with Russian intelligence for money. Most likely, he became interested “because of his ideological beliefs,” the prosecutor told the LTV channel.

The Adamsons and Silonov have pleaded not guilty and plan to appeal the verdict, while the prosecution said it was satisfied with the sentence.