The Moscow City Court has received a criminal case against Ilya Sachkov, the founder of Group-IB, accused of treason. It will be considered behind closed doors by a trio of judges. The FSB believes that Mr. Sachkov, whose organization specializes in investigating and preventing cybercrime and high-tech fraud, was passing state secrets to foreign intelligence agencies. According to some reports, ex-head of the 2nd Directorate of the Center for Information Security (CIB) of the FSB Sergei Mikhailov, who is serving a term of 22 years for treason, helped the special service to expose Mr. Sachkov. Previously, the entrepreneur himself acted as a witness for the prosecution in the case of the ex-colonel.
According to Kommersant’s information, the criminal case against Ilya Sachkov accused of treason (Article 275 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) received by the Moscow City Court contained only about a dozen volumes.
Some of the circumstances of his case, the founder of a company engaged in the provision of services in the field of information security, among whose clients are the largest Russian and international organizations, revealed himself. From the statement published in the telegram channel on his behalf to the chairman of the Investigative Committee of Russia Alexander Bastrykin, it follows that Sergei Mikhailov, one of the former leaders of the FSB CIB, was convicted in February 2019 by the Moscow District Military Court to 22 years in prison. He was found guilty of revealing to the FBI for $10 million the ways and methods of conducting operational-search activities. Interestingly, Ilya Sachkov was one of the witnesses for the prosecution at the trial of the intelligence officer.
At the same time, in a message to Mr. Bastrykin, the businessman calls the accusation against him absurd, but does not specify what kind of secret information he received more than ten years ago from Colonel Mikhailov, according to the investigation, he allegedly passed on to a foreign special service.
Earlier, the media put forward a version that the FBI, allegedly with the help of Ilya Sachkov, could find out the names of Russian hackers who collaborated with Russian special services. However, a source close to Sachkov under investigation told Kommersant that this version was refuted by his defense, and then by the participants in the proceedings themselves. According to him, the basis of the case is the confrontation between the units within the special service itself, with which Mr. Sachkov worked. Ilya Sachkov himself said that Oleg Kashentsov, former deputy colonel Mikhailov, who later headed the CIB, was behind his case. According to Mr. Sachkov, several months before his arrest, he knew that certain actions were being prepared against him. Nevertheless, Mr. Sachkov did not make any attempts to escape.
FSB officers detained him in September 2021. At the request of the investigative department of the FSB, which conducted the case against Mr. Sachkov, the Lefortovo District Court of the capital sent the latter to a pre-trial detention center. All attempts to protect him to achieve a change in the preventive measure to a softer one were unsuccessful. The appeal to Russian President Vladimir Putin, in which the founder of Group-IB claimed that he was an engineer, not a spy, did not help either.
It is obvious that the new public action of Mr. Sachkov was caused by his desire to draw attention to this case of the participants of the international economic forum taking place in St. Petersburg, at which the problems of protecting businessmen from pressure from inspection officials and law enforcement agencies are being actively discussed.
