Kremlin-linked Russian businessman Vladislav Klyushin, who was extradited from Switzerland to the United States in December 2021, has gone on trial in Boston on charges of involvement in a global scheme to trade shares based on confidential information from hackers.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Frank said as the trial started on January 30 that the 42-year-old businessman, along with his associates, had made about $90 million trading stocks based on information stolen by hackers concerning hundreds of publicly traded companies.
Klyushin was charged with conspiring to obtain unauthorized access to computers and to commit wire fraud and securities fraud.
He pleaded not guilty to all charges.
"The defendant had tomorrow's news, tomorrow's headlines, today," Frank said in his opening statement. "And he exploited it for tens of millions of dollars in profits."
Klyushin's lawyer, Maksim Nemtsev, rejected Frank's opening statement, saying there was "zero evidence" to back up the accusations.
Klyushin owns M-13, a Russian company that offers media monitoring and cybersecurity services. According to Russian opposition media, he is close to Russian President Vladimir Putin's first deputy chief of staff, Aleksei Gromov.
The judge in the case, however, has barred any references to Putin during the trial.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office said two of Klyushin's co-defendants -- Ivan Yermakov and Nikolai Rumyantsev -- had been charged with "conspiring to obtain unauthorized access to computers, and to commit wire fraud and securities fraud and with obtaining unauthorized access to computers, wire fraud and securities fraud."
In 2018, U.S. courts charged Yermakov, a former officer in Russia's GRU military intelligence, for his alleged role in hacking and disinformation operations related to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and for similar activity targeting international anti-doping agencies, sporting federations, and anti-doping officials, it said.
The two other suspects, Mikhail Irzak and Igor Sladkov, have been charged with "conspiracy to obtain unauthorized access to computers, and to commit wire fraud and securities fraud, and with securities fraud."
Only Klyushin has been taken into custody in the case. The other four suspects remain at large.