Flynn worked with company run by man convicted of KGB ties: report

President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming national security adviser Michael Flynn partnered this year with a company that is run in part by a man who was convicted of trying to sell stolen biotech material to the KGB, Bloomberg News reported Friday.

Subu Kota pleaded guilty in 1996 to selling the contraband to an undercover FBI agent posing as a KGB spy. Kota was also alleged to have been affiliated with someone who was later convicted of being a KGB agent.

{mosads}He is one of the two members on the board of directors for the Boston-based company Brainwave Science, which develops a technology for detecting the truthfulness of a person’s statements by scanning their brainwaves.

Flynn began partnering with Brainwave Science as a member of the company’s board of advisers in the spring and reportedly helped pitch the company to the Bangladesh military. 

Trump transition spokesman Jason Miller told Bloomberg that Flynn has never met Kota and that he has since ended the partnership with the company.

Kota told Bloomberg that his conviction was based on a misunderstanding. He described him selling the material to the undercover FBI agent as a patent dispute rather than espionage.

Flynn has been criticized for his ties to Russian propaganda network Russia Today, which has paid him to deliver a speech. He also sat next to Russian President Vladimir Putin at an anniversary dinner for the network.

The U.S. intelligence community has accused Russia of interfering with the U.S. election. A secret CIA assessment reportedly concluded that Russia interfered specifically to help Trump win.

Both Trump and the Kremlin deny Russian involvement in the presidential election.