Noticed that two different countries (in FFA), with similar builds and amount of spies, had different expense costs for spies.
The one with less spies had a Expense cost about 2 million more, which is quite a lot when the difference between the two
was just 200k spies. Selling the spies did not matter, as the expense when country had zero spies was still $2,125,683.

Seems like the only difference is that the one with 2 million upkeep has a lot more Spy tech, but there is no upkeep for having Spy technology that Im aware of, at least not when the country has zero spies.

odd, it doesn't do that on alphaffa.

A country with 1 million spy tech and 0 spies seem to have 500k expense cost for spies, which is quite strange :) (This cost then seem to multiply for countries with even more spy tech)

Did you run a turn after selling the spies?

Yes, multiple turns with no change in expense (still 500k or above depending on the tech amount)

Theres no expense change, additive or multiplicative, with with spy tech on alphaffa as long as nw is compensated for.

There are different status screens and they show different information (some erroneous). You need to post an image on imgur so we can see what exactly is going on.

I can't explain expenses with zero spies but the different expenses are likely NW differences between countries. Would need SS to be sure.