Russian Supreme Court upholds ex-FSB officer Dokuchayev's treason conviction
MOSCOW. July 16 (Interfax) - The Russian Supreme Court has upheld the conviction of former Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) official Dmitry Dokuchayev in a treason case against former chief of the FSB Information Security Center Sergei Mikhailov.
"The Moscow Military District Court's sentence of April 10, 2019 has been left unchanged," the Supreme Court's press service told Interfax on Tuesday.
It was reported earlier that the Moscow Military District Court had earlier found Dokuchayev guilty of treason (Russian Criminal Code Article 275) and sentenced him to six years in a high security penitentiary. The court additionally stripped him of his military rank of major.
The Moscow Military District Court ruled in February to sentence Sergei Mikhailov to 22 and Ruslan Stoyanov, a Kaspersky Lab employee, to 14 years in a high security penitentiary on treason charges.
Dokuchayev and another Russian citizen, Georgy Fomchenkov, had earlier been mentioned as individuals implicated in the investigation against Mikhailov. An informed source told Interfax their cases were separated from that of Mikhailov's as they admitted their guilt.
The Moscow City Court ruled in April to sentence Fomchenkov to seven years in a high security penitentiary on treason charges, and the Supreme Court left that sentence unchanged in June.
The factual allegations of the criminal case are unknown as the case is labelled "top secret." The hearings of the case of Mikhailov and Stoyanov as well as that of Fomchenkov and Dokuchayev were held behind closed doors.
An informed source told Interfax that the suspects may have passed on confidential information to the United States' intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA, playing a "double game" and disguising their communications with foreigners as pseudo-recruitment activity.
Russian newspaper Kommersant reported earlier that, according to the case filings, "in 2011, FSB Colonel Sergei Miklhailov, acting through intermediaries, provided FBI officials with information on investigative activities in the case of Chronopay founder and CEO Pavel Vrublevsky, whom the United States consider a cyber criminal."
Fomchenkov's ex-lawyer Ivan Pavlov, the leader of the human rights association Team 29, confirmed to Interfax that the suspects were charged with treason and spying for the U.S.