Local management has bought the Russian business of Group-IB, it will operate under the FACCT brand, the company said in a statement.
“The new owners have retained all contracts with Russian clients, as well as products, technologies and services developed in the country. Business development will continue under a new brand – FAC.C.T. Going forward, Group-IB will only be represented on the international market,” the statement said.
The company added that FAC.C.T. (stands for Fight Against Cybercrime Technologies) continues to provide cybersecurity services in the same volume. Head of the FAC.C.T. became Valery Baulin, who previously held the post of regional director of Group-IB.
The fact that the Russian business of Group-IB will be separated from the international one was announced by the company in July 2022. At the same time, it was decided that the company’s business in Russia and the CIS would begin to develop independently. During the final stage of the asset split, Dmitry Volkov, co-founder and CEO of Group-IB, sold his stake to Baulin and left the shareholders. The amount of the deal was not disclosed. The main shareholder of the Russian legal entity under the new brand FAC.С.T. still remains the founder of Group-IB Ilya Sachkov.
The ownership structure of the Russian company FACCT is as follows: 37.5% – Sachkov, 25% – Altera Capital, 15% – Alexey Kozyrev, 12.5% - Cyberinvest, 10% – Valery Baulin (CEO of FACCT).
Group-IB is an international cybersecurity company. It was founded in 2003 by students of the Department of Information Security of the Moscow State Technical University. Bauman. Headed the company Sachkov. In 2019, Group-IB opened an office in Singapore, followed by offices in Amsterdam and Dubai.
In September 2021, Sachkov was arrested. He is accused of treason. Instead of Sachkov, the company was headed by co-founder Volkov. The materials of the case are classified.
Two sources of RBC reported that the arrest may be related to the treason case, in which Sachkov was a witness. In 2019, in this case, former FSB officer Sergei Mikhailov and former Kaspersky Lab employee Ruslan Stoyanov were sentenced to 22 and 14 years, respectively. Mikhailov’s lawyer Ruslan Golenkov said that Sachkov was a witness for the prosecution.
Two other sources linked Sachkov’s arrest to cryptolockers, malware that encrypts data on a victim’s computer and demands a ransom for decryption. According to one of the interlocutors, Sachkov “followed cryptolockers even before the commotion associated with the sensational “exchanger” SUEX, against which the US imposed sanctions.
Bloomberg sources, in turn, reported that the case against Sachkov could have been initiated due to the transfer of information to the United States about the alleged interference of Russian hackers in the 2016 American presidential election. In Group-IB, this version was called speculation. Sachkov himself called the charges against himself absurd and emphasized that the case was not related to Group-IB and his work in it.