The case of FSB officers accused of treason in favor of the United States went to trial

The Moscow District Military Court (MOVS) will consider criminal cases against former FSB colonel Sergei Mikhailov and three of his accomplices behind closed doors, found out Kommersant . They are accused of treason and, as The Bell wrote in the investigation, may be involved in the leak of information about the attack on the servers of the US Democratic Party, which started the scandal with Russian interference in the US elections.

Details

• The indictments against Mikhailov and his alleged accomplices were approved by the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office (GVP) at the end of September, after which the cases were transferred to the MOVS, Kommersant writes. In addition to the former head of the Department of Information Security Center (TSB) of the FSB Mikhailov, the colonel's subordinate, FSB Major Dmitry Dokuchaev, former employee of Kaspersky Lab Ruslan Stoyanov and businessman Georgy Fomchenkov also appear in the case.
• All four are charged under article 275 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (treason). Mikhailov and Stoyanov categorically deny their guilt, Dokuchaev and Fomchenkov admitted their guilt and entered into a pre-trial agreement with the GVP (before receiving the minimum terms in a special order, they will have to act as prosecution witnesses against Mikhailov and Stoyanov, Kommersant writes). Officially, the essence of the case was never disclosed - the proceedings were held behind closed doors.
• But, as The Bell wrote , the accusation was based on the fact that Mikhailov and his accomplices handed over to the FBI operational-search documents in the case of Pavel Vrublevsky, the founder of the Chronopay payment service. Kommersant writes that the investigation believed that the defendants in the criminal case should have received $10 million for the transferred data, but this figure is not in the final version of the prosecution - perhaps the investigation did not establish the exact amount, the newspaper clarifies.
• Between Vrublevsky and Mikhailov there was a long-standing conflict, the interlocutors of The Bell told. For example, in 2011, Vrublevsky received three years in prison on charges of hacking a competing payment system through which Aeroflot flights were booked. Mikhailov was the main witness for the prosecution against him.
• The accusation against Mikhailov himself was partly based on compromising evidence almost a decade ago, which was collected at the request of Vrublevsky, told The Bell interlocutors who were personally acquainted with the former head of the CIB. According to them, the real reason for the persecution of Mikhailov and his comrades was different - the detainees were involved in the leak of information about attacks on the servers of the Democratic Party before the US elections in 2016. As a result, the American intelligence services blamed the GRU (now the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation) for them. Already this year, the United States charged 12 employees of this department with carrying out cyber attacks on the structures of the Democratic Party.
• Colonel Mikhailov was arrested on December 5, 2016, and a few weeks later, the US intelligence community officially announced that behind the hacks of the servers of the Democratic National Committee, which exposed tens of thousands of documents and letters from Democratic Party functionaries and Hillary Clinton supporters to the public, there was it was the GRU (how the American intelligence services managed to obtain evidence of this information was not disclosed). This began a loud scandal about Russia's interference in the American elections.
• The Bell's investigation into this can be read here .

Artem Gubenko