Overview

• Howard Phillips, 65, has pleaded not guilty to assisting a foreign intelligence service under the National Security Act 2023 and has opened his defence at Winchester Crown Court.
• He said he believed he was in contact with two Russian operatives named Dima and Sasha and left a USB containing Grant Shapps’s home address and private plane details on a bicycle seat post near St Pancras in April 2024.
• Phillips testified that his true motive was to track and expose foreign agents to benefit allied intelligence efforts, including those supporting Israel and Ukraine.
• Prosecutors argue the retired insolvency practitioner knowingly attempted to hand sensitive ministerial data to what he thought were hostile operatives, relying on undercover MI5 officers posing as Russian agents.
• The jury will weigh Phillips’s assertion of a citizen-led espionage sting against prosecution evidence during the ongoing trial.