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A federal jury in Boston on Tuesday indicted a prominent Russian businessman on charges of hacking companies and watching financial information before it was released in a $90 million insider trading scheme.
The Justice Department said in a statement that Vladimir Klyushin, the cybersecurity firm’s alleged contractor for the Kremlin, was arrested after a 10-day trial on wire and securities fraud and hacking-related charges.
Closhin’s attorney, Mark Fernich, told media groups he was “disappointed” by the jury’s verdict and called the case “politically motivated.” He promised to appeal to the court.
Klyushin, who is said to have close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, faces up to 30 years in prison and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines, Justice Department officials said. Closhin, now 42, was arrested by Swiss authorities in March 2021 and extradited to the United States in December 2021.
Former U.S. officials have previously told the media that Kloshin’s relationship with a Russian intelligence officer was of interest to U.S. officials trying to obtain more information about Russian intelligence efforts.
Ivan Ermakov, one of a dozen Russian military officers indicted in 2018 by a federal grand jury for election meddling by hacking and leaking Democratic National Committee documents in 2016, is one of Klyushin’s security fraud charges.
On Tuesday, the Department of Justice Ermakov is still in custody.
Prosecutors said Ermakov worked for Klyushin’s cybersecurity firm M-13, which “provides IT solutions to the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation” along with other government agencies, according to its website.
In the year In May 2019, Klyushin wrote to Ermakov, whom the Justice Department named as a former GRI officer, detailing nearly $1 million in profits per account over the previous seven months, according to the federal indictment.
The Kloshin case has brought geopolitical tensions into greater focus. The Kremlin’s aggressive invasion of Ukraine in February of last year has brought tensions between the US and Russia to the level of the Cold War.
Oliver Siric, a lawyer representing Klouchin in Switzerland, confirmed that US intelligence officials had previously tried to recruit Klouchin in the south of France in 2019, and that the British intelligence agency had made a similar move in 2020 in Edinburgh, Scotland.
The US Office of the Director of National Intelligence did not respond to this request last year. The UK Foreign Office declined to comment on the matter.
Kliushin may be sentenced on May 4.
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