He was supposed to spend nine years of his life behind bars, but Vladislav Klyushin is enjoying his freedom again. On Thursday, August 1, on Turkish soil in Ankara, he is part of the contingent of Russian prisoners handed over by the West in exchange for the release of personalities – such as Evan Gershkovich, a journalist from Wall Street Journal – languishing in the jails of the authoritarian Russian Federation. His presence on the list requested by the Kremlin testifies to his importance to the Putin regime. The founder of the M-13 company, presenting himself as a specialist in the field of cybersecurity, was serving a sentence for insider trading.
Offering his services to large groups (Skechers, Snapchat, Tesla) listed on the Wall Street stock exchange, he took advantage of the information gleaned via his company to anticipate the movements of their shares. The Echoes also point out the targeting of the companies Toppan Merrill and Donnelley, which “collect financial information from listed companies to format it and make it comply with the requirements of the markets watchdog, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)”. For a few hours, they had “a treasure trove, the results of American groups intended to be announced later, after the close of Wall Street”. Thanks to these shenanigans, Kadyushin pocketed a nice haul of 93 million dollars, according to the American television channel CNBCHe demanded a 60% cut of the profits from investors to whom he passed on his valuable information.
The first major alert that caught the attention of the authorities was a simple observation. When M-13 was growing 900%, Wall Street was only growing 25%. Active between 2018 and 2020, Kadyushin made a few mistakes that allowed BJ Kang, one of the FBI agents in the Madoff affair, to trace him back to him. The Echoes highlight “overly explicit comments on the Threema messaging app”, as well as the payment of computers “in bitcoin, without taking the trouble to cover the tracks of this traceable crypto”.
His arrest, in the posh resort of Sion in March 2021, was carefully concealed as the case was so sensitive. We were then in the lead-up to the Ukrainian conflict and tensions between the West and Russia were high. It would be necessary to wait until June of the same year for Gotham City – an independent media outlet specializing in police/justice matters – brought the case to light. In the process, the Swiss general daily The Time highlighted his closeness to “Alexei Gromov, [alors] “Russian media’s eminence grise.” Kadyushin’s company provided a media monitoring service called “Katyusha” – named after the multiple rocket launchers – to the Russian Defense Ministry and the presidential administration.
In a documentary titled Putin’s traders (“Putin’s traders”), CNBC investigated Kadyushin’s underworld activities, revealing that they went beyond profit. He and 12 other intelligence officers were charged with insider trading by U.S. authorities in 2021. Kadyushin’s activities were also part of a drive to destabilize the United States, whose financial markets are seen as one of its main assets. “This is a war that is going on between Russia and the West. Finance, banking, and the financial sector itself, is just one of the battlefields,” said a former senior member of Russia’s FSB intelligence service, whose anonymity was preserved by the American network.