A high-profile Russian businessman with close ties to the Kremlin is about to face trial in the United States. The trial is scheduled to begin in Boston on Monday and is expected to last three weeks. Vladislav Klyushin, who was arrested in Switzerland in 2021, has been charged with participating in a massive scheme that generated tens of millions of dollars through illegal trading using corporate information that was stolen through hacking.
Jury selection is due to commence today in the federal court in Boston, and this case has generated a significant amount of interest and attention. Klyushin, who is 42 years old, used to own a Moscow-based IT company with ties to the Russian government. The trial is taking place at a time when US-Russia relations are at a low point following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine last year. Despite the fact that the case against Klyushin predates the war, his connections to the Kremlin have long been a source of intrigue for US authorities.
The prosecution alleges that Klyushin’s company, M-13, not only did work for Putin’s administration but also employed a former Russian military intelligence officer who is wanted by the US government for his alleged involvement in hacking schemes aimed at interfering in the 2016 US presidential election. Klyushin’s lawyer in the Swiss extradition proceedings, Oliver Ciric, has claimed that the real reason Klyushin was sought was due to his ties to the Russian government and that US and British intelligence agencies had earlier tried to recruit him.
US authorities claim that Klyushin, along with hacker Ivan Ermakov, helped infiltrate the networks of two firms that assist publicly traded companies with filing reports with securities regulators. This allowed them to download yet-to-be-announced financial reports, which they used to make illegal trades. Using the stolen financial reports, Klyushin, Ermakov, and three others from 2018 to 2020 agreed to buy and sell stocks for multiple companies including IBM Corp, Snap Inc, and Tesla Inc, earning at least $89 million, according to prosecutors.
Klyushin’s legal team asserts that he was already wealthy before the alleged conduct took place and that the government’s evidence linking any trades he placed to the hacked information has “serious flaws.” He has been held without bail since his extradition from Switzerland, with a judge citing his wealth and assets, including a nearly $4 million yacht, which prosecutors say he discussed buying at the same time the trading scheme was taking place.
In an attempt to build their case, prosecutors plan to show jurors a photo of the yacht, though US District Judge Patti Saris last week ruled that they cannot present more pictures of it to avoid any appearance of “the prejudice of ‘here is a super rich oligarch.'” This trial is expected to be a highly-publicized and closely-watched case, and the outcome will have far-reaching implications for the future of US-Russia relations.