Russian court jails top cybersecurity executive for 14 years in treason case

MOSCOW –

A Russian court docket on Wednesday convicted Ilya Sachkov, a prime cybersecurity govt, of treason and jailed him for 14 years in a case which state news company TASS stated centred on allegations he had handed categorised data to international spies.

Sachkov, who denied wrongdoing and listened to the decision in a glass courtroom cage, helped discovered Group-IB, as soon as one in all Russia’s most distinguished cybersecurity companies which this yr introduced it had reduce ties with its authentic market.

Sachkov, 37, who’s now not related to Group-IB however owns a share in its former Russian business, was arrested in September 2021 by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) on treason expenses in a case that was categorised.

Former colleagues who purchased Group-IB’s Russian business and renamed it F.A.C.C.T stated in an announcement that his authorized staff would attraction towards his conviction and ask President Vladimir Putin to intervene.

Sachkov had been ordered to serve out his sentence in a high-security penal colony, they stated.

“Employees have taken what has happened calmly, they continue to support Ilya and hope he will be released and rehabilitated,” the assertion stated.

“This is a hard moment for all of us and a black day for the (Russian) cybersecurity market.”

Some of his supporters, sporting black T-shirts together with his portrait on, had been within the courtroom to listen to the decision.

At the time of his arrest, Group-IB centered on investigating high-tech crimes and on-line fraud in Russia and elsewhere.

Sachkov had ruffled official feathers a yr earlier than his arrest at an occasion attended by Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin.

In a speech on the occasion proven on state TV, Sachkov accused the authorities of permitting a distinguished Russian legal hacker to go about his business unimpeded, criticized the appointment of somebody he stated was a former spy to a physique overseeing the export of superior applied sciences, and accused Putin’s cybersecurity envoy of creating poisonous statements.

Lauded as one in all Russia’s most promising businessmen earlier than his detention, Sachkov had met Putin within the Kremlin in 2019 after successful a prize for younger entrepreneurs.

Sachkov is the most recent in a protracted line of individuals, together with scientists, troopers, officers and a former journalist, to face treason expenses lately.

(Reporting by Andrew Osborn; Editing by William Maclean)