The Obninsk City Court in the Kaluga Region has sentenced a former employee of a scientific center to four years in a penal colony on charges of illegally transferring technology to an American laboratory (Part 3 of Article 189 of the Criminal Code). The news agency "Interfax" reported this, citing information from the FSB.
According to the agency's statement, the defendant provided a representative of a U.S. National Laboratory with scientific and technical data related to the characteristics of an energy installation. The FSB believes this information could have been used in the development of weapons of mass destruction, which is why it was subject to export control.
The specific details of what information was transferred to the U.S., the identity of the accused, and when the incident occurred were not disclosed by the agency.
The publication "Mediazona" noted that the Obninsk Court's online resource mentions only one case with a similar charge—against former senior researcher at the Physics and Power Engineering Institute (FEI) in Obninsk, Yevgeny Rozhikhin. The verdict in his case was delivered in November 2024.
As "Mediazona" points out, Rozhikhin held the position of an employee responsible for organizing calculations on supercomputers in Laboratory No. 11 of the nuclear energy department. He was also a co-author of scientific papers dedicated to the operation of fast-neutron reactors.