Ten alleged members of a Russian spy ring are expected to plead guilty in US court which could facilitate a larger prisoner swap between Washington and Moscow, reports said on Friday.
The defendants will be allowed to plead guilty to one charge conspiring to act as an unregistered foreign agent which carries a maximum penalty of five years and has no minimum term, the New York Times reported.
If the judge of the Federal District Court in Manhattan accepts the plea then the suspects are then expected to leave the country promptly.
The government may drop a second charge that most of the defendants face, conspiring to launder money, which carries a 20-year term, the newspaper said. None are charged with espionage.
Among the defendants expected to plead guilty is 28-year-old Anna Chapman, who has garnered worldwide attention from the media in the past few weeks. There have also been reports an imprisoned Russian scientist, Igor V Sutyagin, has left Russia in anticipation of a cold war-style exchange, according to NYT.
His relatives, however, said they had no idea where he was. Journalists in Vienna told Sutyagin's family they had spotted Sutyagin disembarking a plane there, and that he was met by a British officer, the daily reported.
But hours later, his parents were not aware of his whereabouts. "Here's the one thing I can say with complete certainty: At the moment, I have no idea where my son is," said Svetlana Y Sutyagina, the scientist's mother, who rushed home from work in the middle of the day as reports of the swap proliferated.
"There is no official information," said her husband, Vyacheslav.
"We are waiting for a call from him, but I don't know who may give him a phone, or the opportunity to give us a call."
The scientist's lawyer, Anna Stavitskaya, told NYT Sutyagin had verbally agreed to an exchange during a meeting with Russian officials and that Americans had also been at the meeting.
"Probably he will be free today, this is the most important thing," said Stavitskaya.
Sutyagin had consistently denied spying for the United States, for which he was sentenced to a 14-year term, but this week he signed a document admitting guilt, according to Stavitskaya.
"If he is free, the United States could be thanked for one thing, for saving a person," she said.
