Court sentences IT entrepreneur Ilya Sachkov to 14 years behind bars for treason

Sachkov said after the prosecutor’s request.

Sachkov has been in jail since September 2021. According to the investigation, he handed over classified information to a foreign state. Sachkov pleads not guilty.

Bloomberg reported that the trial against Sachkov may be related to the transfer of information about the Fancy Bear hacker group to the US authorities. The group is allegedly linked to Russian intelligence and was involved in cyberattacks during the 2016 US presidential election.

Sachkov announced the Oleg Kashentsov, the head of the second operational department of the Center for Information Security of the FSB had been involved in his persecution, as well as and the former head of this department, Sergey Mikhailov.

In 2019, Mikhailov was sentenced to 22 years in a maximum security prison for treason. He was accused of sharing classified information with the US.

Sachkov says it was he who “drew the attention” of the FSB to Mikhailov’s crimes and acted as a witness during the trial. The entrepreneur believes that the colonel decided to avenge by sharing the information with Kashentsov, which triggered criminal charges.