US Sanctions 12 Kaspersky Executives

Sanctions Comes After Biden Administration Banned the Russian Cybersecurity Firm David Perera (@daveperera) • June 21, 2024

Senior executives of Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky face new restrictions against doing business in Western countries following an announcement Friday morning by the U.S. Department of the Treasury that it sanctioned 12 of them.

The sanctions do not include company CEO Eugene Kaspersky or the company itself - which the Biden administration on Thursday banned from doing business inside the United States and effectively from obtaining U.S.-made technology (see: Biden Administration Bans Kaspersky Antivirus Software).

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said the ban was the result of "the Russian government's continued offensive cyber capabilities and capacities to influence Kaspersky's operations."

Today's sanctions encompass the Kaspersky Lab board of directors, the company's head of research and development, the heads of consumer and corporate businesses and other members of the executive team.

The sanctions prevent blacklisted individuals from conducting business transactions with U.S. financial institutions or individuals.

Treasury has ramped up sanctions pressure on Russia and Russian corporations as the Kremlin war of conquest against European neighbor Ukraine continues well into its second year. Earlier this month, the department prohibited American companies from offering IT support or cloud services for enterprise management software or applications used in design or manufacturing.

It also sanctioned several companies for acting as fronts to procure for the Russian military materials including anti-UAV equipment, machine tools, industrial machinery, and microelectronics. The Department of Commerce limited transactions with what it said are eight Hong Kong shell companies used to circumvent export controls and also put five Russian and Chinese on an export blacklist.

Major U.S. technology companies have retreated piecemeal from the Russian market as U.S. and European authorities tighten sanctions. Russian resellers of Western cloud products from providers including Microsoft and Amazon told customers in March that their service would terminate, including cloud access to Microsoft products such as the Office suite, SharePoint and Power BI. Chat app Slack reportedly is also cutting ties with Russian users.

Russia continues to support an offensive operation around the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. Russian President Vladimir Putin traveled to North Korea and Vietnam this week and signed a mutual defense pledge with Pyongyang leader Kim Jong Un. U.S. President Joe Biden in a June 13 press conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the U.S. will continue supporting Ukraine so that it has "victory and that Russia does not prevail."