On September 21st Herman Simm, a middle-ranking civil servant in Estonia's defence ministry, was arrested, along with his wife, and charged with spying for an unnamed foreign power.

ECONOMIST: A sensational arrest inside Estonia��s defence ministry

Against the advice of the defence ministry's top civil servant, ministers sent the scientist to undergo a grilling by a parliamentary inquiry into the affair, at which he claimed not to recognise the reporter's words as having come from his briefing.

ECONOMIST: Dr Spin quits | The

She gave details of "truly shocking" waste at the Ministry of Defence and said the senior civil servant at the department should have stepped in to block the contract to build the aircraft carriers.

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