U.S. nabs high-ranking Kremlin insider who could unlock secrets of Russia’s 2016 hack

0
376

[ad_1]

“You may be seeing the signs that they are continuing to pursue this case, with real big implications for exposing in even greater detail what the Russians did to influence the outcome of our election,” said Michael McFaul, former U.S. ambassador to Russia in the Obama administration.

According to the insider trading indictment, Klyushin’s IT company, M-13, worked for the Russian presidency and governmental agencies. Also named in the indictment was Ivan Yermakov, a former military intelligence official who was indicted in 2018 as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in 2016.

But the intriguing part of Klyushin’s capture in Switzerland may be that he traveled there at all.

Bloomberg reports that Klyushin was “approached by U.S. and U.K. spy agencies in the two years before his exit from Russia and received heightened levels of security in Switzerland.” He also curiously failed to make a final appeal challenging his extradition to the U.S. after both U.S. and Russian officials had been competing to win his extradition from Switzerland following his arrest there.

“It underscores the risk that anybody, billionaires or others close to the Russian state, face when they break American laws if they travel abroad,” McFaul noted.



[ad_2]

Source link