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Wednesday, July 14, 2010

TOI: 12th member of Russian spy ring was a Microsoft employee

Microsoft Corp said the 12th alleged member of a Russian spy ring operating in the US was an employee at the company’s Redmond, Washington, headquarters.

The man, a Russian citizen in his early 20s named Alexey Karetnikov, worked for Microsoft as a software tester for about nine months according to a Microsoft spokeswoman in Moscow.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry declined to comment on the news when contacted by Bloomberg. Ten members of the spy ring pleaded guilty to conspiring to serve as unregistered foreign agents on June 8 in a US federal court in Manhattan. They admitted to carrying money or coded messages, secretly communicating with Russian officials and instructing others on how to find information useful to Russia. Their objective was to infiltrate US policy-making circles after constructing false American identities, prosecutors said.

Karetnikov was departed on charges of violating US immigration laws, Itar-Tass reported. Karetnikov admitted to the violation and agreed to deportation to avoid court proceedings, the state-run news service said.

The Facebook page of a person identified as Alexey Karetnikov shows that he is married and graduated from St Petersburg State Polytechnic University in 2009. He worked for a company called “Neobit” in addition to Microsoft, according to the Facebook page.

A St Petersburg-based software developer called OOO NeoBIT lists Katernikov’s university among its partners and the Federal Security Service, a successor to the Soviet-era KGB.

source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/news/software-services/Microsoft-employee-a-Russian-spy/articleshow/6167326.cms

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