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NOTE: This is part 2 of our exclusive story we broke this Tuesday. If you have not read the first part yet, please click this text to read it.
^^^EXCLUSIVE^^^
As stated in the first part of this exclusive story, sources inside the FSB told ghost.report that a Russian spy ring was operating within the United States under certain Tech companies and Venture Capital Firms.
One of these firms that these sources strongly pointed at was the Silicon-Valley based firm Runa Capital, founded in 2010 by 4 Russian businessmen and investors. As stated in the first part, the backgrounds of these founders and partners, as well as two former employees, Ramil Ibragimov; and Masha Drokova, were analyzed and discussed.
These 6 individuals have very prolific backgrounds working for certain organizations, groups, and companies. One was even featured in the 2012 Russian documentary, “Putin’s Kiss.” Those who work at Runa Capital, or are former employees, are not alone in their rise to Runa.
In Part 2 of this exclusive story, you will begin to see the thick and tangled web that these 6 came from. You will see where they came from; who they worked for; who funded their companies; and who is behind it all. The end results will make you question if your government is really secure and works for you.
Since Runa’s inception in 2010, it has given 66 rounds of funding to 40 companies in the world, according to Runa’s portfolio and online information base Crunchbase. Below is a list from Crunchbase detailing Runa’s investments in certain companies:
The first thing to notice is the increase in activity between 2011 and 2014, before leveling off after 2015. What should also be noted is that most of these companies that Runa has invested in are companies that provide IT-services to websites and web browsers. some of these companies are not based on cloud or browser-based services, but are based on health tech; educational tech; financial tech; and other industries that rely on technology.
What you should also notice is there are at least 9 companies that are owned by partners and founders of the company or those who are part of Runa are board members for these companies.
The first person to look at is Managing Partner and Co-Founder Dmitry Chikhachev. According to his Crunchbase portfolio, Chikhachev is a board member of the Web-server provider Nginx Inc., which received an excess of over $30 Million from Runa between 2011 and 2016. He is also a board member of the Moscow based English-language language service LinguaLeo, which received over $3 Million in 2012.
Adding to the collusion, former PR-Director at Runa, Masha Drokova, according to Business Insider, worked for this company as a public relations specialist. Referring back to the first part, Drokova has worked for a Pro-Putin, government-sponsored youth organization called “Nashi” in Russia and was featured in the 2012 documentary, “Putin’s Kiss.”
The second person who got funding from their own Firm was Runa Partner and co-founder Andre Bliznyuk. Bliznyuk, according to his Crunchbase portfolio, is a board member of Loan provider service Lendio, which received over $20 Million from Runa between 2011 and 2013; a board member of software developer Station X, which gives software tools to scientists and clinicians, which received $5 Million in 2012; and board member of web-security firm StopTheHacker, which received over $1 million in 2012.
However, the most important person’s companies to look at is Founder Serguei Beloussov, who, according to his Linkedin account and Crunchbase profile, is the founder and chairman of the board at telephony solutions provider Infratel, which received $3 Million in 2012 from Runa; and founder and board member of cloud-business management software company Acumatica; which received $23 Million in 2 rounds of funding between 2013 and 2014 from Runa. Both companies do business in the United States and Headquartered in Washington State.
And this person is where the real rabbit hole begins.
Looking deeper into Beloussov’s past, as mentioned in part 1, shows a very experienced businessman and entrepreneur who either started his own companies or serves on the board or runs the whole board on other companies, mostly those in IT or other technology, such as data backup and cloud services.
One business to look at is Beloussov’s Massachusetts-based data backup company Acronis. Founded by Beloussov, alongside current partner of Runa, Ilya Zubarev, who went under the alias of “Jack” Zubarev, was founded in 2003, and is partnered alongside over 50,000 companies around the world. The company’s board of directors is run by the former alongside Vice President and Treasurer of Intel, as well as Advisor for Runa Capital, Ravi Jacob; and former Oracle Corp VP and Chief Marketing Officer of Palo-Alto Networks, Rene Bonvanie.
Other persons on the Executive management Team include VP Sales in Residence for Runa, Jim Herman; Runa’s Investment Director Gaidar Magdanurov; and Board of Directors member for Beloussov’s other company Acumatica, Ezequiel Steiner.
Another Company of Beloussov is the cross-platform virtualization and automation service Parallels. Also founded by Zubarev and Beloussov, its Board of Directors includes Runa Capital, Shopify and Pinterest Board of Advisor member Jeremy Levine; Runa Capital Advisor, CTO of Atlas Informatics and Managing Principal for Ivy Softworks Mark Zbikowski; and Runa Advisor and Founder of ProfitBricks, Andreas Gauger.
The organization everyone should pay attention to is a Moscow-based scientific research center, funded by a Government-sponsored foundation, called the Russian Quantum Center. As Chairman of the board of trustees of the RQC, he was also hired in 2011 alongside PR “guru” Masha Drokova, who worked there until the following year. What is also interesting to note is that, after RQC, Drokova became the VP of Communications for Acronis between 2013 and 2014.
Also, referring back to Runa Capital’s team in the US, two Principals on the team may have ties to a global banking and financial services company; a hardware and software company; and a digital asset exchange.
Before going in-depth on these folks, here is what a Principal for a VC firm does:
Principals are senior members of the investment team. In addition to helping the firm discover and meet the industry’s most promising entrepreneurs, they also work very closely with companies after investment.
The principals do not usually lead deals (with very rare exceptions), however, they are trusted, long-term members of the team. As an entrepreneur, time spent building a relationship here is not time wasted. They have the ability and influence behind closed doors to hook you up with critically useful meetings and introductions. And, beyond investment itself, Principals are often highly networked, thoughtful players in the technology startup ecosystem that can usually help in a multitude of other ways.
The first principal that is of concern is Nick Tomaino, who had worked as an Assistant Trader for the Principal Trading Firm First New York Securities; and an Associate at another Venture Capital firm, North Atlantic Capital. What he is most noted for is being the Business Development Manager at the digital asset exchange company CoinBase. He left in February 2016, and joined Runa in March.
Aside from this, the second Principal is former Deutsche bank Analyst; Piper Jaffray Associate and former Senior Manager of corporate development and strategy for Seagate Technologies Jeff Cooperman. Again, Seagate is a very well-known and highly used technology company from servers to hard drives that are used in many computers and internet servers. What companies use Seagate’s technology on a consistent basis?
Besides this, two other close members of the RQC include Founding partner of Beloussov’s other Venture Capital Firm, Quantum Wave Capital and founder of QWave Capital LLC Serguei Kouzmine; and former VMware president, software tools developer for Intel, executive vice president of the Platforms Strategy and Developer Group, and president of Cloud infrastructure for EMC corporation Paul Maritz.
However, the person on this board that leads us to our next phase of the investigation is Alexander “Sasha” Galitsky. aside from being a member of the board of the RQC, Acumatica, and Parallels, Galitsky is also a part of the Almaz Capital group. However, there is one other foundation he is a part of.
The foundation’s name is called the Skolkovo Foundation, in which Galitsky is the Managing Partner of.
Here’s where the next branch of this tree begins, at the Skolkovo Foundation, a Russian-government created and sponsored foundation, as mentioned in the first part of this exclusive story, was created to “Encourage innovation and the startup culture, mainly in technological advances.”
Over the course of 7 years, Skolkovo has given over 30 grants to Technological organizations and startups to encourage advances in technology. Here is a list of who got money from the Skolkovo Foundation:
Now one of these recipients of these Grants was the Russian Quantum Center in 2010 and 2011, one for an undisclosed amount of money and another grant in 2011 for $6.7 Million US Dollars.
According to the CrunchBase portfolio, the Skolkovo Foundation does the following for certain companies:
In order to carry out its operations, Skolkovo Foundation manages Skolkovo Innovation Center, Technopark, Skolkovo Institute of Technology (Skoltech), and Skolkovo city. Several companies, including Boeing, Cisco Systems, EADS, GE, Johnson & Johnson, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Siemens, Nokia, and Samsung have signed R&D partnership agreements with Skolkovo Foundation.
Do not forget that the same Foundation was alleged to be aided in their inception and development by the Obama Administration, mainly though their State Department, which was controlled by Clinton at the time!
When the article was first posted back in August, a spokeswoman for the Skolkovo Foundation denied any Kremlin involvement that may have utilized the “Russian Silicon Valley” for spying. But we will save more of this for the next part.
Focusing back on the Foundation in general, the board of trustees are as follows:
Some interesting people to note are as follows:
- Ivan Bortnik: Former Deputy Chairman of the USSR State Committee on Science and Technology; and former Deputy Minister of Science, Higher Education and Technical Policy of the Russian Federation.
- Sergey Gorkov; Chairman of the Board for Sberbank and Chairman of Vneshekonombank.
- Dmitry Livanov: former State Secretary / Deputy Minister of Education and Science of the Russian Federation.
- And Many other high-ranking Government officials that are essential to the Russian Federation’s economic power.
However, the main person on the Board to note is the Former general director of the Russian Venture Company, Igor Agamirzyan.
Agamirzyan has a very lengthy history in Technology, especially with major companies that do business or are based in Russia. Starting for Astrosoft in 1991, he worked for this software provider and developer company / IT service provider in St. Petersburg until 1995, before working at Microsoft’s Russia branch. Starting as a Consultant for the Middle East division, he then quickly became the Senior consultant for the European division, becoming Enterprise Unit Director for Microsoft Russia in 1997 until 1999. He then became the National Tech Officer in Microsoft Russia in 2003, up until 2006, when he took up a General Manager position at EMC corporation.
And again, referencing the R&D agreements with several corporations, Microsoft was one of these lucky recipients in 2010 and expanded its presence in 2012.
But that is not all, take a look at the Foundation Board of Skolkovo:
Also, take a look at the Grant Committee of Skolkovo:
If you take notice, Those who received R&D agreements have members on either the Foundation Board and Grant Committee. To sum it up, here are a few on these boards that are Founders or chairmen of their own companies who got Exclusive R&D deals with Skolkovo:
- Eric Schmidt: Executive Chairman of Google and Alphabet and a member of the Board of Directors for Apple. Exclusive Deal with Skolkovo and Facebook to allow machines to SEE!
- Craig Barrett: Co-Chair of the board at Skolkovo and former CEO / Chairman of the board at Intel. Joined Development of Skolkovo.
- Esko Aho: Executive Chairman at Skolkovo. Former Prime Minister of Finland/ Former Executive VP of Corporate Relations. Scored a deal with Skolkovo while on BOTH boards.
- And Other persons on these Committees and Boards.
We will stop Part two right here, but we are still not done with this investigation. While the ground is being covered, it is only a fraction of the wide web that goes back to Moscow and the Skolkovo Foundation.
It is time to ask yourselves and the companies involved, how deep does the rabbit hole go? How big is the rabbit hole? Has our security and integrity been compromised? who else is in on the building of our Enemy’s technology program?
These questions are vital ones to know how far back this goes, how deep it is, and who is a part of the Russian Spying game. However, the spying game goes all the way. How far? You’ll know how far soon enough.
Stay tuned for Part 3…
Original article can be found here: https://ghost.report/2017/04/06/the-russian-spy-network-in-america-uncovered-part-2-connecting-the-dots/