Shaltay-Boltay group leader Anikeyev charged with 6 hacks - lawyer
MOSCOW. April 7 (Interfax) - Shaltay-Boltay hacking group leader Vladimir Anikeyev has been accused of six instances of illegal access to computer data, Anikeyev's lawyer Ruslan Koblev told Interfax.
"My client has been accused of six instances of illegal access to computer data. We are unaware of the victims' names as of yet," Koblev said on Friday.
"Detectives did not find grounds for recognizing [Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev's press secretary] Natalia Timakova and [deputy head of the Kremlin domestic policy directorate] Timur Prokopenko as aggrieved parties," he said.
The lawyer said earlier that a Federal Security Service detective had definitively indicted Anikeyev and said that the preliminary inquiry had come to an end.
"The plea agreement has been fully satisfied and approved by a prosecutor," the lawyer said.
Materials regarding the hacking group leader have been referred to a separate proceeding, he said.
Anikeyev and his defense team are studying materials in the proceeding. "The materials comprise 15 volumes," Koblev said.
The lawyer said earlier that his client would stand trial in a special proceeding, which guaranteed no more than half of the maximal prison term for the implicated crimes.
The hacking group known as Shaltay-Boltay, or Anonymous International, became known several years ago. It intercepted emails and hacked accounts of high-ranking officials, large companies and media outlets and sold the data on the Internet.
It was reported earlier that Vladimir Anikeyev, a suspected organizer of the hacking group Shaltay-Boltay, and his two accomplices Konstantin Teplyakov and Alexander Filinov had been arrested in Moscow in November 2016.
All three were charged with unauthorized access to computer information committed by a group of persons by previous concert.
Anikeyev pleaded guilty, made a confession and started to cooperate with investigators, while Filinov said he had nothing to do with computer hacking due to his lack of such skills. Filinov said he had been slandered by Anikeyev in an attempt to improve his own position. Filinov was the only one who challenged his arrest, which, however, was pronounced legal by the Moscow City Court.
Another presumed Shaltay-Boltay member, Alexander Glazastikov, who is residing in Estonia, told the Dozhd TV channel in an interview that he considered it unlikely that Filinov was a hacker as he had never seen any mention of him in the group's internal documents.
The third defendant, Teplyakov, also pleaded guilty.
For now, he has been charged only with hacking emails of Sberbank top manager Yevgeny Kislyakov.
Meanwhile, the media has said new charges of hacking emails of officials were possible.