A wannabe Russian spy met with undercover intelligence officers at Costa Coffe as he was desperate to avoid going back to a 'normal nine-to-five' job, a court has heard.
Howard Phillips, 65, from Harlow in Essex, is on trial at Winchester Crown Court charged with assisting a foreign intelligence service under the National Security Act.
On Thursday, jurors were played a covert recording of a meeting between Phillips and two undercover intelligence officers - who he believed were Russian agents called 'Dima' and 'Sasha' - at the London Bridge Hotel on April 26 last year.
He then met the two officers at a Costa Coffee in a retail park in Essex on May 9 where he was allegedly handed a brown envelope containing £500 to provide information on then-Defence Secretary Grant Shapps.
The former City insolvency practitioner boasted of holding 'useful' information on the Tory politician saying that he knew him personally, the court was told.
