A Moscow court has rejected the appeals of three men allegedly linked to the ransomware group REvil who were seeking to be released from pretrial detention.
The court said on February 2 that it was upholding the pretrial detention of Dmitry Korotayev, Aleksei Malozyomov, and Mikhail Golovachuk.
Decisions on the appeals filed by two more suspects, Roman Muromsky and Daniil Puzyrevsky, will be made on February 4, the court said.
Russia's Federal Security Service said in mid-January that its agents had searched 25 addresses and detained 14 people in the case, eight of whom were placed in pretrial detention.
In November, the United States said it was offering a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to the identification or location of anyone holding a key position in the REvil group.
A senior U.S. administration official told reporters that one of the individuals detained was allegedly behind the May 2021 ransomware attack against Colonial Pipeline, which caused a major disruption of gasoline supplies up and down the east coast of the United States.
At their first summit meeting in June, U.S. President Joe Biden called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to pursue cybercriminals operating from inside Russia who target businesses around the world, especially in the United States.
Russian-based hackers are believed to be behind a significant proportion of global ransomware attacks.