An official at the Russian General Consulate in Kazakhstan’s largest city, Almaty, said on August 1 that Kazakh authorities have decided not to extradite Russian IT expert Nikita Kislitsin to the United States.
According to Artyom Oganov, a Kazakh court ruled to keep Kislitsin in custody until his possible extradition to Russia is decided. Oganov did not say when the ruling was made, while Kazakh officials have yet to comment.
In late June, Kazakh authorities said they arrested Kislitsin, who is the senior executive at the F.A.C.C.T. (formerly Group-IB) company, one of Russia’s top cybersecurity firms, at Washington's request.
Kazakh officials said at the time that they also had received a request from Moscow to extradite Kislitsin to Russia.
A top Russian diplomat in Kazakhstan, Yevgeny Bobrov, said then that a note to Kazakhstan's Foreign Ministry had been sent urging Astana not to expedite Kislitsin's extradition to the United States.
Kislitsin is wanted in the United States for allegedly buying personal data obtained through the 2012 hack of Formspring, a now-defunct social media site that allowed users to receive answers to questions.
On June 28, the Tver district court in Moscow said it issued an arrest warrant for Kislitsin in connection with an investigation into illegal access to computer data in Russia, adding that a legal request will be sent to Kazakhstan to extradite Kislitsin to Russia.
One of Kislitsin's acquaintances and the mastermind of the hacks of the U.S. companies, Yevgeny Nikulin, was extradited to the United States from the Czech Republic in 2018 and sentenced to more than seven years in prison. He was released from jail earlier this year and deported back to Russia.
Group-IB, a company involved in cybersecurity activities, changed its name to F.A.C.C.T. in April.
Last week, the Moscow City Court sentenced the company's founder, Ilya Sachkov, to 14 years in prison on a high treason charge.
The court pronounced the verdict and sentence on July 26 without providing details of the case. It is not clear exactly what Sachkov was accused of as the trial was held behind closed doors because the court said the case materials were classified.
The 37-year-old, who was arrested in Russia in September 2021, is one of a group of prominent people, including scientists and cybersecurity officials, to be arrested in Russia on treason charges in recent years. Moscow has faced numerous allegations of being behind cyberattacks on Western countries, which it has consistently denied.
Investigators have said Sachkov was suspected of passing classified information to a foreign country.
With reporting by RIA Novosti and TASS