Russian Businessman Vladislav Klyushin has been sentenced to nine years in prison by a U.S. court for his involvement in a $93 million insider-trading scheme. The Moscow government has dismissed the conviction as politically motivated, according to state news agency RIA.
Klyushin, who has ties to the Kremlin, was found guilty in February of trading shares using hacked secret earnings information about various companies. Hackers between 2018 and 2020 accessed and downloaded yet-to-be-announced earnings reports for hundreds of companies, including Tesla and Microsoft. Klyushin and others then traded these shares before the information became public, prosecutors claim.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry has criticized the charges against Klyushin, calling them far-fetched and fabricated. The ministry attributes the conviction to what it perceives as fanatical Russophobia prevailing in foreign power structures. They have demanded that U.S. authorities cease what they consider to be legal arbitrariness against Russian citizens.
