Ruslan Stoyanov is a Russian computer scientist. In December 2016, he was arrested on charges of treason as part of the

Mikhailov case The Mikhailov Case refers to an espionage scandal surrounding the activities of the Center of Information Security (CIS) of FSB (18th Center), whose employees were implicated in high treason after participating in a number of high-profile criminal ...

. In 2019, he was sentenced to 14 years in prison.

Career

From around 2000 to 2006, Stoyanov worked in the

Ministry of Internal Affairs (Russia) The Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation (MVD; , ''Ministerstvo vnutrennikh del'') is the interior ministry of Russia. The MVD is responsible for law enforcement in Russia through its agencies the Police of Russia, Migratio ...

investigating cyber crime. In 2010, Stoyanov was reportedly the owner of Indrik, a computer crime investigative firm, until it was bought by

Kaspersky Labs Kaspersky Lab (; ) is a Russian multinational cybersecurity and anti-virus provider headquartered in Moscow, Russia, and operated by a holding company in the United Kingdom. It was founded in 1997 by Eugene Kaspersky, Natalya Kaspersky and ...

in 2012. From then on, he worked in the computer incident investigation department of Kaspersky Labs until his arrest in 2016.

Arrest

In early December 2016, Stoyanov was arrested by the FSB on charges of treason. In Russia, treason is defined possessing secret information. even without sharing it, or as sharing information with a foreign state that damages state security. The new law does not require authorities to prove a suspect damaged state security. In Stoyanov's case, he was accused of sharing information about convicted Russian cyber criminal Pavel Vrublevsky with American authorities. Stoyanov, along with two other men involved in the conviction of Vrublevksy, were among those accused.

Conviction

In February 2019, a Moscow court convicted Stoyanov of

high treason Treason is the crime of attacking a state authority to which one owes allegiance. This typically includes acts such as participating in a war against one's native country, attempting to overthrow its government, spying on its military, its d ...

, and sentenced him to 14 years in prison. He was alleged to have caused Russian state secrets about convicted cybercriminal

Pavel Vrublevsky Pavel Olegovich Vrublevsky (; born 26 December 1978) is a Russian, owner and general manager of the processing company ChronoPay. He is also the founder of investment company RNP and a Russian Forbes contributor on matters relating to blockchain ...

's company,

ChronoPay Pavel Olegovich Vrublevsky (; born 26 December 1978) is a Russian, owner and general manager of the processing company ChronoPay. He is also the founder of investment company RNP and a Russian Forbes contributor on matters relating to blockchai ...

, to be passed along to the FBI. He was specifically accused of giving information about Vrublevksy's criminal operations to Kimberly Zenz, a private sector cybersecurity researcher that the court accused of being an American agent. Zenz denied all such accusations and asked the court to permit her to testify. The Russian court ignored her request. Zenz discussed her experience with the accusations, and the infighting among the Russian security services that she believes played a role in the accusations. In their book, ''The Red Web: The Struggle Between Russia's Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries'', Russian investigative journalists

Andrei Soldatov Andrei Alekseyevich Soldatov (, born 4 October 1975 in Moscow, Russia) is a Russian investigative journalist and Russian security services expert. Together with fellow journalist Irina Borogan he is co-founder and editor of the Agentura.Ru websit ...

and

Irina Borogan Irina Petrovna Borogan (), born September 9, 1974, in Moscow, Russia, is a Russian investigative journalist. Journalism Irina Borogan started her journalistic career in 1996 as correspondent of Segodnya newspaper. For Segodnya she covered 1999 N ...

report that the case was also motivated by a desire by Russian security services to stop international cooperation between Russian investigators and researchers and those in the West.

Hospitalization

In October 2018, Stoyanov had reportedly suffered a pulmonary embolism.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Stoyanov, Ruslan Russian computer scientists Living people 1975 births