WASHINGTON — The White House announced Thursday a major multinational prisoner swap between the United States, Russia and other countries. As part of the historic deal, the Russian government released high-profile Americans who had been held in Russian prisons for more than a year, including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich.
The deal also involved a number of Russians who were arrested for various crimes and were imprisoned in prisons in the United States and other countries.
Among that group was a wealthy young Russian businessman named Vladislav Klyushin, who was serving a federal prison sentence for his role in one of the most damaging insider trading scandals in Wall Street history.
Over the past year, CNBC has been producing a documentary about Klyushin and the dramatic rise and fall of his business empire.
The story begins in early 2021, when a private jet carrying a rising young Russian tycoon and his wife lands at the tiny Sion airport high in the Swiss Alps.
Vladislav Klyushin, the head of an information technology company with ties to the Russian government, is pictured in an undated photo attached to a U.S. Justice Department document.
U.S. Department of Justice | via Reuters
Zion is the gateway to Zermatt, the famous ski resort where the world’s elite ski and party. But the airport is still an hour’s drive from the slopes, so the really wealthy walk down the runway and catch a helicopter straight to the resort.
The young oligarch was at the height of his power. He had built a hugely successful company in Moscow and was connected at the highest levels of the Russian government.
Vladislav Klyushin sentenced to nine years in U.S. prison for conspiracy to commit $93 million in hacking transactions. Source: U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Massachusetts
Source: United States Attorney’s Office, District of Massachusetts
For his efforts, he received the highest award: he was hired to work in the office of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
What the oligarch didn’t know was that U.S. law enforcement had been monitoring his plane ever since it left Moscow.
Or maybe they were planning to catch him and charge him with a crime that would undermine the heart of the American financial system.
The man on the private jet in Switzerland was named Vladislav Klyushin, and he was the owner of a cybersecurity company called M-13 in Moscow.
But M-13 was a front for Klyushin’s real business: hacking American companies to steal confidential information, which he then used to trade on Wall Street before it was made public.
This is the homepage of M-13, a Russian cybersecurity firm that was stealing financial information from American companies.
Source: United States Attorney’s Office, District of Massachusetts
It was a multi-level crime. Illegal insider trading made possible by illegal hacking. And it made Klyushin very rich. The victims of his crimes were investors in iconic American companies such as: Tesla, year and Sketchers.
Welcome to the dangerous underbelly of the global financial system, where markets are just another arena for the powerful to flex their muscles and undermine their competitors.
The Kremlin views America’s capital markets as one of the nation’s key strengths and therefore a prime target for attack.
“There is a war going on between Russia and the West right now. Finance, banking, the financial sector itself is just one of the battlefields,” said a former senior official of Russia’s FSB intelligence agency, who asked CNBC to remain anonymous to detail the crimes because he fears for his own safety.
CNBC’s Eamon Javers speaks with a former Russian spy, who requested anonymity, about the Klyushin case.
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CNBC has been investigating this criminal organization for months, making it one of the most damaging insider trading cases in Wall Street history.
But it’s not over yet.
Rather, our reporting has shown that there is a persistent and ongoing threat to American businesses, investors, and the markets themselves.
The result of this year-long project is the documentary “Putin’s Merchants,” which features exclusive access to FBI agents and U.S. prosecutors who took down criminal organizations and new reporting on the extraordinary lifestyles of oligarchs and their friends who profited from the illicit trade. The six-part podcast series, “Putin’s Merchants’ Crimes,” will be released on August 15.
“He’s very similar to people we prosecute every day across America for white-collar crimes,” said U.S. Attorney Stephen Frank of Klyushin. “These are people who don’t have to engage in white-collar crime to be successful, because they’re already successful.”
“He was wealthy. He had a very nice house. He had a very nice car. He had a country home,” said Frank, who worked on the case. “But he wanted more, like many of our defendants, and he found a way to get easy money. And he took it.”
For full details, see “Putin’s Merchant”.
