WASHINGTON — The White House announced Thursday a massive cross-border prisoner exchange between the United States, Russia and other countries. As part of the historic deal, the Russian government released high-profile Americans held there, including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who had been held in a Russian prison for more than a year.
Also included in the deal were a number of Russians who had been arrested for various crimes and held in prisons in the United States and other countries.
Among them was a wealthy young Russian entrepreneur named Vladislav Klyushin, who was incarcerated in federal prison for his role in one of the most damaging insider trading schemes in Wall Street history.
For much of the past year, CNBC has been working on a documentary about the glorious rise and fall of Klyushin and his business empire.
The story begins in early 2021, when a private plane carrying an up-and-coming young Russian oligarch and his wife touched down at the small airport of Sion, high in the Swiss Alps.
An undated photo of Vladislav Klyushin, the owner of an information technology company with ties to the Russian government, is included in the U.S. Justice Department filing.
U.S. Department of Justice | Reuters
Sion is the gateway to the famous ski resort of Zermatt, where the world’s elite go to ski and party. But the airport is still an hour’s drive from the ski slopes, so the really wealthy walk across the tarmac and board a helicopter directly to the resort.
The young oligarch is at the absolute peak of his power. He built a highly successful company in Moscow and established contacts at the highest levels of the Russian government.
Vladislav Klyushin, sentenced to nine years in prison for his $93 million hacking conspiracy. Source: Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s Office
Source: Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s Office
His efforts earned him the ultimate prize: a job in the Office of the Russian President Vladimir Putin.
What the oligarch didn’t know was that U.S. law enforcement had been monitoring his flight since it left Moscow.
Or they plan to arrest him and charge him with crimes that go to the heart of the U.S. financial system.
The man on the Swiss private plane was Vladislav Klyushin, who owns a cybersecurity company in Moscow called M-13.
But the M-13 was a front for Klyushin’s real business – hacking into American companies and stealing confidential information, then using it to make trades on Wall Street before the information became public.
The homepage of M-13, a Russian cybersecurity company that is stealing financial information from American companies.
Source: Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s Office
This is a multi-layered crime: illegal hacking that makes illegal insider trading possible. This made Klyushin very wealthy. The victims of his crimes were investors in iconic American companies.
Welcome to the dangerous underworld of the global financial system. Here, the market is just another area where great powers can flex their muscles and weaken their competitors.
The Kremlin views U.S. capital markets as one of the country’s key strengths and therefore a prime target for attacks.
“This is an ongoing war between Russia and the West. Finance, banking and the financial sector itself is only one of the battlefields,” said a former senior member of Russia’s FSB intelligence service. CNBC asked him to describe the crimes in detail on condition of anonymity, fearing for his safety.
CNBC’s Ermon Javers spoke with a former Russian spy who requested anonymity about the Klyushin case.
CNBC
CNBC spent months investigating the criminal network in one of the most damaging insider trading incidents in Wall Street history.
But it’s not over yet.
Instead, our reporting reveals ongoing threats to U.S. companies, investors and the market itself.
The result of this year-long project is the documentary above, titled “Putin’s Traders.” It features exclusive access to FBI agents and U.S. prosecutors responsible for dismantling the criminal organization, as well as new coverage of the incredible lifestyle of the oligarch and his friends as they profited from their illegal dealings. The six-part podcast series titled “The Crimes of Putin’s Merchant” will be released on August 15.
As for Klyushin, federal prosecutor Steven Frank said he “is very much the type of people we prosecute for white-collar crime every day in America. They don’t really need to turn to white-collar crime” in order to be successful because they’re already successful .
“He was wealthy. He had a very nice house. He had very nice cars. He had a country house,” said Frank, who prosecuted the case. “But he wanted more, and like many of our defendants, he found a way to get easy money. He accepted it.”
