Sergey Mikhailov and Ruslan Stoyanov sold state secret for 36 years

Former FSB officer Sergei Mikhailov and a former employee of Kaspersky Lab Ruslan Stoyanov got a long time in the case of high treason. The court found them guilty of disclosing operational information to US intelligence services.
27.02.2019
RBC
Origin source
The Moscow District Military Court convicted of treason and sentenced Sergei Mikhailov, formerly head of the Information Security Center (CIB) department of the FSB, and Ruslan Stoyanov, formerly head of the department at Kaspersky Lab, and first of all an operative of the Department of Special Technical Actions of the Main Directorate of Internal Affairs for Moscow, to 22 and 14 years of imprisonment in a colony of strict regime, respectively. Mikhailov also fined 400 thousand rubles., Stoyanov - 150 thousand. The fine will be credited to the account of the FSB.

Mikhailov is deprived of the rank of Colonel of the Reserve and Order for Military Merit, medals of the Order of Merit for the Fatherland, I degree (with swords) and medals of the same Order of II degree, Stoyanov is deprived of the rank of police major. This decision was taken by a trio of judges headed by Vladimir Maurin.

The trial of Mikhailov and Stoyanov, who did not admit guilt, was closed, their criminal case was classified. The judge on February 26 announced the introductory and operative parts of the sentence. Publicly law enforcement agencies and defenders of the accused did not disclose and did not comment on the plot of the case.

The case is about disclosing to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation the methods and methods of conducting operational investigative activities in the case of the founder and director general of the Chronopay processing company Pavel Wroblewski, he wrote earlier in Kommersant. According to the newspaper, Mikhailov, his subordinates and Stoyanov received $ 10 million for this information.

The defense of Stoyanov announced her intention to appeal the verdict.

Two other defendants partially plead guilty

The arrests in the Information Security Center of the FSB became known in January 2017, although they took place two months earlier. At that time, it was reported that a CIB employee received money from a foreign organization through an employee of a certain Russian company in the field of information security. Mikhailov, according to sources of RBC, was detained during the board of the FSB.

A few months after his arrest, Stoyanov handed over an open letter through lawyers, where he spoke about the dangers of recruitment by cyber fraudsters. “The essence of the transaction: the state gets access to cyber-technologies and information in exchange for permission to steal with impunity abroad,” explained the head of the computer incident investigation department at Kaspersky Lab, who until 2006 served in the internal affairs bodies.


In total, the case was four accused. In addition to Mikhailov and Stoyanov, this is Georgi Fomchenkov, an entrepreneur, and Dmitry Dokuchaev, the senior security officer of the 2nd Division of the Operational Directorate of the CIB. The latter was known as a hacker under the Forb nickname: in this capacity, he gave an interview to Vedomosti in 2004. Dokuchaev was also the editor of the section “Hacking” in the magazine “Hacker”. Dokuchaev began working for the FSB under the threat of criminal prosecution, RBC sources told.

Dokuchaev and Fomchenkov partially admitted guilt. They agreed that they transmitted information to foreign intelligence agencies, but claimed that they were not aware of the criminal nature of what was happening, sources told RBC. According to the defendants, their actions were aimed at combating cybercrime around the world. The case of Dokuchaev and Fomchenkov, which was singled out in a separate proceeding, has not yet reached the court.

Sold operational information for $ 10 million

The indictment in the case of Mikhailov and Stoyanov states that in 2011 Mikhailov gave the FBI information on operational investigative activities in the case of Pavel Vrublevsky, wrote in October 2018 to Kommersant.

According to the version of the state prosecution, the colonel wrote down the information constituting the state secret on two disks and, through Dokuchaev, transferred them to Stoyanov and Fomchenkov, who had taken the carriers abroad. Stoyanov at the international conference on cyber security in New Denver (Canada) handed over the disc to Kimberly Zents, an employee of the American company I-Defense. Fomchenkov delivered another CD to the USA. They were promised $ 10 million for this data, but how much they got in the end is not known - they did not find any money, Kommersant wrote.

Former senior cyber threat analyst for I-Defense Zents gave written testimony on the case. She handed them over to Alexander Husak, a lawyer for one of the accused; Russian law enforcement agencies did not get in touch with her, Zenz told RBC. According to her, she did not offer money to the accused, and also never worked for foreign special services.


At the request of the FSB, Vrublevsky was arrested in 2011, in 2013 his case went to court. The entrepreneur was accused of organizing a DDoS attack on the payment system Assist, which was a competitor to his Chronopay, because of which it was impossible to pay for e-tickets on the website of Aeroflot’s main client for several days. Wroblewski called the reason for his prosecution "overlap by Sergei Mikhailov," with whom he had a "personal conflict", but later changed his position. Mikhailov and Dokuchaev took part in the operational work on the case, Mikhailov also appeared in court in the case of Wroblewski as a witness, where he confirmed that he had known the entrepreneur since 2007. Wroblewski was interested in the special services, since "he could rally around himself hackers," the colonel explained. Technical expertise in the case was carried out by Kaspersky Lab.

As a result, Vrublevsky received two and a half years of the colony, and after parole he told Kommersant that in 2010 he informed the authorities about suspicions “regarding this group of people in illegal activities that could be qualified as treason homeland. "

A new head has been appointed at the CIB

In mid-2017, the head of the CIB changed: Andrei Gerasimov, who headed him since 2009, retired, Sergey Skorokhodov became his successor. In fact, the question of the resignation of Gerasimov was resolved several months before his dismissal. All this time he was on vacation, the interlocutors of RBC claimed.

Mikhailov and Stoyanov’s case could also be affected by the fact that the CIB had a competing structure within the FSB, told RBC sources, the Center for Information Protection and Special Communications. The functionality of these units is largely the same, explained the interlocutors of RBC.