MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 04th December, 2021) Ilya Sachkov, the founder of Russian cybersecurity company Group-IB, who is accused of high treason, could have given the US authorities information about the Fancy Bear hackers, associated in the West with the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, and their alleged attempts to influence the US presidential election in 2016, Bloomberg reported on Friday, citing anonymous sources.
According to the media, the information allegedly disclosed by Sachkov helped Washington to identify the GRU agents suspected of involvement in the hacker attack and to impose sanctions against them.
At the same time, Bloomberg noted that it failed to establish whether these alleged actions were part of the official charges against Sachkov.
According to the anonymous sources, Sachkov, like the former deputy head of the FSB security agency's Center for Information Security, Colonel Sergei Mikhailov, also convicted of treason, collaborated with foreign governments. Sachkov, who was a witness in the Mikhailov case, reportedly knew the latter and used to work with him for several years.
Bloomberg stated that both individuals provided Western officials with information that allegedly helped Washington establish Russia's role in the hacker attack on the 2016 presidential election. However, no concrete evidence is provided for this.
In addition, the sources allegedly told Bloomberg that Sachkov could have also provided the United States with information about the founder of another cybersecurity company, Vladislav Klyushin, arrested in March by the Swiss authorities at the request of Washington. Klyushin is accused of engaging in inside trading in tens of millions of Dollars with several accomplices. According to Bloomberg, Klyushin's lawyer Oliver Sirik said that the US authorities wanted to accuse his client of organizing a hacker attack on the 2016 election, while the charges of inside trading were just an excuse.
The sources also told the agency that one of Klyushin's colleagues, Ivan Ermakov, was allegedly among GRU officers accused in the United States of organizing a hacker attack on the 2016 presidential election. He is also a defendant in the case against Klyushin, Bloomberg said.
On November 23, the Lefortovo District Court in Moscow extended Sachkov's arrest over high treason charges until the end of February. Sachkov appealed to the Russian President Vladimir Putin to help commute his detention in custody to house arrest. Sachkov's letter was read to journalists at the court in Moscow by his lawyer Sergey Afanasiev.
Sachkov was arrested on September 29 for two months. All materials of the case are classified as top secret. If convicted, he may face 12 to 20 years in prison.
Group-IB was founded in 2003, later growing into one of the leading security intelligence vendors in Russia.
