A former City worker who ‘dreamt of being James Bond‘ was today found guilty of trying to spy for Russia after handing over information on Grant Shapps to undercover MI5 officers.
Howard Phillips, 65, from Harlow in Essex, provided the home address and landline for Mr Shapps, his local MP and then the Defence Secretary, to two British spies posing as Russian agents.
He told the pair he wanted to work in intelligence to avoid a ‘nine to five office’ job after retiring aged 58 and clearing out his savings.
Phillips, who is divorced with four grown-up children, now faces a lengthy jail term after offering to provide logistical support for Russian agents across the world in the increasingly desperate hope that it would bail him out of his money worries.
Dressed in a dark suit and dark coloured tie, he shook his head and looked around the court as he was found unanimously guilty by a jury at Winchester Crown Court after four hours of deliberation.
Jocelyn Ledward KC, prosecuting, said Phillips was ‘struggling financially’ and seeking ‘interesting and exciting work for easy money.’
He was filmed from multiple angles in an elaborate undercover operation which saw two MI5 agents adopting Russian accents to pose as agents of the SVR, foreign intelligence agency, even though Phillips had never heard of the organisation.
Howard Phillips, 65, has been found guilty of volunteering to spy for Russia
The moment police arrested the former City worker after an undercover sting by MI5
Prosecutors said Phillips intended to assist Russian agents from the end of 2023 until May last year.
He offered to pass on Sir Grant’s contact details as well as the location where he kept his private plane in order to ‘facilitate the Russians in listening on British defence plans’, the trial heard.
He was heard telling the men he wanted to work for Russia in exchange for financial independence from the UK.
Police found no material on his phone or computer that suggested he had any sympathies for Russia.
The defendant’s ex-wife, Amanda Phillips, told the court during the trial that he ‘would dream about being like James Bond’, and that he watched films to do with MI5 and MI6 as he was ‘infatuated with it’.
Mrs Phillips told the court she was aware the defendant had applied for a job at the UK Border Force in October 2023, which prosecutors said was part of his bid to assist Russia’s intelligence service.
Phillips previously claimed he had contacted the Russian embassy in early 2024 in a bid to track and expose Russian agents to assist Israel.
On March 15 last year, Phillips volunteered his services to the Russians, the Iranians and the Chinese in letters to each of their embassies. The Russian letter was intercepted by MI5 who replied to him by email and then switched the conversation to WhatsApp.
Phillips was asked to prepare a document on a USB stick that would explain how he could assist Russian intelligence and deliver it to London on April 4, leaving it in the seat post of a silver bicycle locked to railings behind St Pancras Station.
Phillips was filmed dropping off a USB stick in a plot to leak sensitive information about Grant Shapps
The wannabee spy was seen checking into the front desk at a Hilton Hotel in London
He then left carrying a brown paper bag, which he later handed over to one of the ‘agents’
In the document he said he could ‘completely blend in as an upstanding citizen locally or tourist in any worldwide location’ and the MI5 officers then directed him to turn up to the London Bridge Hotel on April 24 where they met in a private apartment.
Sitting on a sofa, Phillips told two MI5 officers playing the part of Russian intelligence officers ‘Dima’ and his boss ‘Sasha’ that he only spoke English and ‘a little bit of French, un peu.’
He added: ‘I now need to work to earn money. I have a background in insolvency so I could go back into insolvency working in the City of London. I don’t want to do it. If I don’t have to do it, I won’t do it.
‘I have worked nine to five in offices for most of my life. I want to be doing something different.’
Phillips offered to travel to Spain or South America, adding: ‘Get a villa, a hotel or something, like a British tourist.
‘Hire a car, do all this stuff, be at a certain port or whatever, meet someone, take them wherever, make sure they’ve got food, looked after, help them do what they need to do, take them back. Make sure they’re safe, clear and gone.’
Sasha asked why he had picked Russia, Phillips replied: ‘I feel like over many, many years there has been a lot of discredit afforded to Russia. I think a lot of it is absolute rubbish.
‘Maybe there is some element of truth but then none of us are without sin, we all – whether Britain or America – do what we feel we have to do. I feel that we could work well together.’
Sasha asked Phillips: ‘Where did you get the idea?’ and he explained: ‘I was thinking I have to do something, I have to earn money, what can I do, what do I want to do? And I came up with all the things I didn’t want to do.
‘Then I was thinking about maybe I need to get away on holiday, I thought about Moscow – it’s just a thought process – and I suddenly thought maybe I can offer services. I get what I want and you get what you want.’
At a meeting with ‘Dima’ on May 9 at a Costa Coffee shop in the Lakeside Retail Park in West Thurrock, Essex, Phillips was told to book a hotel in London under his own name and contact details, purchase a mobile telephone, and prepare for a ‘senior officer from my organisation’ who was arriving in London for a ‘sensitive meeting.’
Phillips grew up in Swiss Cottage, north London and attended St Marylebone Grammar School
Shortly before 3pm on May 16, Phillips checked into the Hilton Hotel in Upper Woburn Place in Euston, wearing a baseball cap and carrying an umbrella.
He then met Dima at the Leon cafe in the nearby Brunswick shopping centre and handed over a brown paper bag containing a mobile phone, the hotel key card and a USB stick which contained the details for Grant Shapps.
He was handed an envelope containing £1,000 in cash and given instructions to meet a Russian man at the Black Sheep coffee shop on King’s Cross Square but when he arrived plain clothed officers surrounded him and arrested him.
Phillips denied materially assisting a foreign intelligence service to carry out UK-related activities under the National Security Act 2023, saying he had been ‘intending to track and expose a Russian agent that might be operating in the UK.’
His lawyer, Jeremy Dein KC told the jury Phillips was ‘not the kind of person to commit crime’ but he did ‘think the preposterous, that was part of his personality.’
However, Ms Ledward said: ‘For all of his professed patriotism, the defendant had been rebuffed over and over again in his efforts to get involved in aspects of running the UK, which he saw as somehow having gone wrong.
‘There was a sense of hopelessness about some of what he wrote, a sense of disaffection, and add to that the fact he was, in a very real sense, desperate for money.
‘We all know that desperate people do desperate things, things that are out of character, things that they would never have envisaged themselves doing, and that includes breaking the law.’
Phillips grew up in Swiss Cottage, north London and attended St Marylebone Grammar School, before going on to work for his father in a factory in the East End and then becoming an insolvency practitioner in 1986.
Phillips is seen in May 2024 revealing he possesses personal information about Mr Shapps
Phillips kept the information about Mr Shapps on a USB stick
Phillips previously worked for Bond Partners in the City and stated on his CV that he had ‘high level managerial experience, training and running teams of between seven and 20 professionals.’
He became self-employed in 2011 and then worked as a manager in the charity sector before going into ‘semi-retirement’ in 2018 and doing work in GDPR compliance for websites.
As his money ran out, Phillips described how he sent out hundreds of CVs and applications online, adding: ‘I was avidly seeking employment but none was forthcoming.’
In 2022, he began writing letters to Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, and to Conservative Party ministers, offering his advice on how to solve the immigration crisis and problems in the NHS. He applied to be a Conservative councillor but later switched his attention to the Reform Party.
In one letter he offered his services to the chief executive of BP and in another to the Emir of Qatar.
He offered to be the manager of Arsenal football club and the England team. He wrote to Hollywood actor Jennifer Aniston and to Tom Cruise’s agent, asking ‘to be granted an audience’ and ‘to sit down with Mr Cruise for about an hour.’
In a letter to Kevin Huvane at the Creative Artists Agency in Los Angeles on January 23 2024, Phillips wrote: ‘I am writing to you as I have missed a certain aspect and this is probably my last chance. I have foregone what I believe to be my true vocation, acting.
‘I am sincerely asking you to please give me a chance to show what I can bring to the screen’
The Arsenal rejection letter was put up on the side of the family fridge but none of the others responded.
Phillips told the jury that he was ‘knocking on doors and seeing whether a door of opportunity opens somewhere, somehow either to get a small part in something or a possibility to achieve some kind of role and achieve some sort of success.’
‘I wanted to be able to do something useful, I wanted to be able to put my name to something and to leave my mark,’ he added.
‘Even when I was working in insolvency, I was of the opinion that while I was working and fulfilling my role as a husband and father and receiving an income, I felt I wasn’t really achieving something I was happy to put my name to.’
Phillips grins as he speaks to people he believed were Russian agents
However, his financial situation was ‘decreasing rapidly’, he had used up all the money he had gained from the sale of a property and by May 2024 had only £374.48 let in his bank accounts.
His relationship broke down and he had to spend at least one night sleeping in his car. He moved out of his girlfriend’s home in Ware, Hertfordshire and into a bedsit in Harlow, Essex.
‘I always try to maintain a positive outlook but I was very anxious about my situation,’ he said.
In the draft of a book from April 2024, Phillips wrote that for the past five years he had been ‘on top of the world’ with ‘wonderful offspring, the love of a beautiful and lovely lady, a fabulous social life, a very nice vehicle and fabulous holidays.’
‘I am now sitting in a Weatherspoon’s pub having spent the night sleeping in my car,’ he added. ‘I have taken my eye off the reality ball and blown the kind of money in five years that most people won’t see in their lifetimes.
‘I have gone from financial, emotional, mental and physical security to rock bottom uncertainty.
‘I sincerely wish I had woken up to reality several years ago. I don’t dare tell my offspring. I have been a complete idiot and the fear of reality has allowed me to be less than forthcoming at times.’
Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb remanded Phillips in custody and adjourned sentencing to the ‘earliest available date’ in the autumn.
The judge said she wanted a full pre-sentence report on the defendant ahead of sentencing as the conviction was for a ‘relatively new’ offence.
Addressing the jurors, she said: ‘Thank you very much for the important work that you have done on this very important case.
‘We are trying, as a system, to get to the right answers in these situations.’
Bethan David, head of the Crown Prosecution Service’s counter terrorism division, said: ‘This conviction sends a clear message to anyone considering spying for or assisting Russia.
‘Howard Phillips clearly outlined the services he was willing to provide for a hostile state. From gaining employment within the civil service and applying for security clearance, to providing the personal details of the Secretary of State for Defence – Phillips was brazen in his pursuit for financial gain and unbothered about the potential detriment to his own country.
‘It is a criminal offence to assist a foreign intelligence service, regardless of your motive or whether or not you succeed. We will always seek to prosecute anyone who poses a threat to the UK.’
