Boston, January 30, 2010: A wealthy Russian businessman with ties to the Kremlin is on trial in the United States for allegedly engaging in tens of millions of dollars in illegal business profits using corporate data stolen in a hack.
In the year Jury selection is scheduled to begin in federal court in Boston in the case of Vladislav Klyushin, 42, the owner of a Moscow-based information technology company with ties to the Russian government before his arrest in Switzerland in 2021.
The three-week trial marked a low point in U.S.-Russia relations following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine last year. And while the charges against Kloshin, who has pleaded not guilty, predate the war, his ties to the Kremlin have long drawn the attention of US officials.
Klyushin’s company, M-13, hired not only the Putin administration but also a former Russian military intelligence operative wanted by the U.S. government for allegedly meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, prosecutors said.
Oliver Siric, his lawyer in the Swiss extradition proceedings, said the real reason Kloshin was wanted was because of Russian government ties and that US and British intelligence agencies had previously tried to recruit him.
U.S. officials say hacker Ivan Ermakov, while working for Klyushin, infiltrated the networks of two firms that help publicly traded companies file reports with securities regulators and helped download yet-to-be-disclosed financial reports.
Using those stolen earnings reports, Kloshin, Ermakov and three others agreed to buy and sell shares in several companies, including IBM Corp ( IBM.N ), Snap Inc ( SNAP.N ) and Tesla Inc ( TSLA.O ). That allowed them to spend at least $89 million, prosecutors said.
Kushini’s lawyers said he was already wealthy before the alleged act and the evidence linking any government business to the hacked data was “severely flawed”.
He has been held without bail since his extradition from Switzerland, and the judge cited his wealth and possessions, including a nearly $4 million yacht, which prosecutors said he was negotiating to buy at the same time as the transaction scheme.
Prosecutors plan to show jurors a photo of the yacht, although U.S. District Judge Patty Sarris last week barred them from presenting more images, citing the prejudice of “‘Here’s the richest oligarch’.”
Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Alexia Garmfalvi and Daniel Wallis
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