Collaborative espionage event

A weird little event occurred in my latest game, the first DA game I've played that had an minor races in it. I've recruited several spies and not deployed any. I attempted to stick one on a minor race and was told off by the computer. A couple of turns later the game announced that my spies had collaborated with that minor race and the minor race had stolen all the tech from a neighbouring AI, there was even a piece of footage of a shuttle heading towards a planet. The text also said that the minor race would be willing to trade the techs, possibly for a planet. So I had a nosy and discovered that they did seem very willing to trade, in fact I managed to persuade them to part with all the defensive and research techs and several weapon techs in exchange for some mining and colonisation tech. I've never managed to get any AI to sell me weapon techs before (even in DL) without selling half my kingdom. And since I started with DA I've stopped trying to trade techs usually. Oddly enough they clung like a limpet to the colonisation techs they had. Great fun for me although I'm just assuming that the event lowered their reluctance to trade with me. Will have to see if they are as accommodating later on in the game. Just wondering if this event turns up in every game and maybe that is why the AI civs seem to be trading happily between themselves - maybe they are using minor races as go-betweens.