Feds close case of Kremlin-connected Russian tech businessman accused of hacking non-public reports of U.S. companies

The fate of a Kremlin-connected Russian tech businessman accused of directing an $82 million hacking scheme of non-public reports of U.S. companies and then illegally trading off this information is now in the hands of a federal jury.

Attorneys made their closing arguments Friday following the two-week trial of Vladislav Klyushin in federal court in Boston’s Seaport District.

The defense argued that the case was politically motivated and built on “predetermined conclusions.” The prosecution argued that Klyushin’s trading activities had only a “one-in-a-trillion chance” of being coincidental and unconnected to the hacking.

Klyushin was a director of Moscow, Russia-based M-13, a company, according to court documents, which provided services including the “monitoring and analytics of media and social media messages” and penetration testing — a service in which a company tests for security vulnerabilities in IT infrastructure. The company claimed it was used by Russian government agencies and even by President Vladimir Putin’s office.

He was arrested while on a ski trip in Switzerland in March 2021 and then extradited to the U.S. to face four counts related to conspiracy and wire and securities fraud.

Klyushin was indicted alongside alleged co-conspirators Ivan Ermakov and Nikolai Rumiantcev on April 6, 2020. Two others, Mikhail Irzak and Igor Sladkov, have also been charged in the case. All of the alleged conspirators, excepting Klyushin, remain at large.

Ermakov, the alleged lead hacker, is a former officer in the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) also wanted by the FBI after he and 11 others were indicted by a federal grand jury in Washington D.C. in July 2018 for allegedly interfering in the 2016 presidential election.

“What’s not in dispute is that the hackers were sophisticated, they were experts,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Frank during the prosecution’s rebuttal, the last of the arguments heard before the jurors were given instructions by Judge Patti B. Saris.

Prosecutors allege Klyushin directed a scheme in which hackers at his company obtained quarterly and annual reports of major companies before they were made public by…