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The founder of one of Russia’s largest cybersecurity corporations has been arrested on suspicion of state treason and will be held on an infamous criminal security tour for the next two months, a Moscow court said Wednesday.
The tariffs opposing Ilya Sachkov, founder of Group-IB, are classified and the main points were unclear. State news firm Tass quoted an anonymous source as saying Sachkov had denied transmitting secret data to foreign intelligence services.
Group-IB, which specializes in preventing cybercrime and ransomware, showed that law enforcement raided its agents yesterday, but said it knew the explanation for Sachkov’s arrest.
“The Group-IB team is confident in the innocence of the company’s chief executive officer and his integrity,” the company said in a statement.
Dmitry Volkov, co-founder of Group-IB, will assume Sachkov’s leadership responsibilities, he added.
RIA Novosti, another state-run news channel, reported that investigators raided Group IB in St. Petersburg and other unspecified facilities on Wednesday.
The Singapore-based company is the official spouse of Interpol and Europol and has hosted senior foreign law enforcement officials at its meetings in Moscow. Its personal sector customers come with BP, Microsoft, DHL and several giant Russian state-owned companies.
Group-IB said it continues to operate normally. ” Group-IB’s decentralized infrastructure allows us to protect our customers’ data, business operations and dashboards without disruption in our offices in Russia and around the world,” the company said.
Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for President Vladimir Putin, said Wednesday that Sachkov’s arrest “had nothing to do with the business and investment climate in our country,” according to Interfax.
“He was in a grey domain because of the industry he worked in. The cybersecurity of the secret facilities was a component of their territory. So, he either crossed a line or crossed someone’s interests,” said one user who worked with Sachkov.
Russia’s FSB, the KGB’s successor firm, has in recent years arrested several scientists, cybersecurity officials and a former journalist for treason, punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
Convictions on counterintelligence-related laws, which have particularly broadened definitions of state secrets and potentially classified nearly all contacts with foreign organizations as treason, have increased fivefold since 2009, according to Mediazona, a news site independent of the judiciary.
In 2019, a court sentenced a former FSB cybersecurity official to 22 years in prison for treason for transmitting data to the United States. case, the main points of which have not been made public.
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