Ex-FBI agent gets five years in jail

A former FBI agent was sentenced to five years in prison on Monday for selling confidential information to a man seeking to engineer the downfall of a Bangladeshi political rival, report AP and New York Daily News.

Robert Lustyik, 53, sold the information regarding the rival for tens of thousands of dollars in 2011, authorities said. The political figure was not identified.

But according to previous reports, Lustyik took bribes from BNP activist Rizve Ahmed Caesar in return for sensitive information for conspiring to abduct Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's son Sajeeb Ahmed Wazed Joy.

Caesar, son of Mohammad Ullah Mamun, vice-president of BNP's cultural wing Jasas, got three and a half years' jail in March and started serving his sentence in April.

Lustyik had access to the documents thanks to his position on the counterintelligence squad at the FBI's White Plains office.

“Robert Lustyik's criminal conduct, driven by greed and corruption, displayed a disdain for the integrity for which the FBI stands,” Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara said.

His latest prison sentence in White Plains federal court comes nearly six months after receiving a 10-year jail sentence for trying to derail a Utah investigation into an alleged defence contractor kickback scheme. 

Lustyik, who retired in 2012, will have to serve the prison terms consecutively.