Overview

• Prosecutors told jurors that on May 16, 2024, Howard Phillips handed over a USB stick containing Grant Shapps’s home address and private jet location to men he believed were Russian spies
• Undercover MI5 and Metropolitan Police Counter-Terrorism officers posing as agents named Dima and Sasha orchestrated the sting that captured Phillips’s offers of assistance
• Evidence shows Phillips kept his October 2023 Border Force job application active in the belief that the resulting security clearance would grant him further intelligence to trade
• Prosecutor Jocelyn Ledward KC argued that Phillips was driven by financial need rather than ideological sympathy with Russia when he pursued the scheme
• Phillips has pleaded not guilty to breaching the National Security Act 2023 and is set to face a multi-week trial before Justice Dame Cheema-Grubb