Court in Russia’s North Ossetian Republic found a 55-year-old Russian citizen of Georgian origin guilty of spying in favor of Tbilisi and sentenced him to eight years in prison, the Russian news agencies reported on Tuesday.

A local prosecutor in North Ossetia said that Badri Kurashvili, a construction worker at military facilities, was passing to the Georgian intelligence sensitive information about the military units in North Caucasus starting from October, 2007 till the end of 2008.

The official said that Kurashvili was sending the information via “encrypted SMS”.

This is the third case this year when a court in North Ossetia sentences Russian citizen for spying in favor of Georgia.

A serviceman of the Russian armed forces, Jemal Nakaidze, was sentenced to nine years in prison in October and in August a former deputy commander of one of the Russia’s military units of North Caucasus Military District, Mikhail Khachidze, was sentenced to six years in prison.