Maxim Shipenkov/Reuters
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting with his Kazakh counterpart Nursultan Nazarbayev at the Kremlin in Moscow, December 22, 2014.
According to the US Justice Department, the alleged spy, Evgeny Buryakov, posed as a banker in the Manhattan office of a Russian bank, where he worked to gather intelligence and transmit it back to Moscow.
The complaint alleges that Buryakov helped "formulating questions to be used for intelligence-gathering purposes by others associated with a leading Russian-state-owned news organization."
In a statement, Assistant Attorney General John Carlin said Buryakov was attempting to get "economic and other intelligence information."
"The attempt by foreign nations to illegally gather economic and other intelligence information in the United States through covert agents is a direct threat to the national security of the United States, and it exemplifies why counterespionage is a top priority of the National Security Division," Carlin said.
Authorities said two other individuals were also members of the "spy ring" arrested Monday: Igor Sporyshev and Victor Podobnyy. Sporyshev worked as a trade representative of the Russian Federation in New York and Podobnyy served as an attaché to the Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations, according to the Justice Department.
This post is being updated.