Meta-detection of FSB.
How 900 pages of Sergei Abramov’s criminal case were born from $75 in a year

The FSB com­plet­ed inves­tiga­tive actions in the case of cor­re­spond­ing mem­ber of the Russian Academy of Sciences Sergei Abramov a year lat­er: the mate­ri­als were trans­ferred to the court, which must set a date for the hear­ing. In the new Putin term, they began to give inad­e­quate­ly large sen­tences for dona­tions to the Anti-Corruption Foundation (a recent case — 7 years for $150). However, 67-year-old Abramov, with his numer­ous chron­ic dis­eases, is unlike­ly to with­stand that much. Intimidated by the new repres­sive laws, civ­il soci­ety and sci­en­tif­ic cir­cles, includ­ing the lead­er­ship of the Russian Academy of Sciences, are in no hur­ry to pub­licly speak out in defense of the cor­re­spond­ing mem­ber of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the cre­ator of the major­i­ty of domes­tic super­com­put­ers that were in the world TOP-500. While the world sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty, rep­re­sent­ed by the American Physical Society, is seri­ous­ly con­cerned about the fate of the Russian scientist

The Pereslavl District Court of the Yaroslavl Region reg­is­tered the mate­ri­als of the crim­i­nal case against Sergei Abramov, the largest spe­cial­ist in super­com­put­ers. The inves­ti­ga­tion last­ed a year. As a source famil­iar with the results of the inves­ti­ga­tion told T-invari­ant, the crim­i­nal case con­tains 900 pages. The first hear­ings are ahead. 

According to T-invari­ant, sev­en dona­tions of 1,000 rubles each appear in Abramov’s case. The sci­en­tist him­self has repeat­ed­ly denied his guilt, includ­ing deny­ing that he made these trans­la­tions. He proves that the trans­fers were made with­out his knowl­edge. It also gives sta­tis­tics Central Bank of the Russian Federation that, for exam­ple, in 2021, accord­ing to the Central Bank report, 1,035,000+ “bank­ing trans­ac­tions” were made with­out the clien­t’s consent.” 

The scientist’s defense will insist that in the case there is no time and place of reg­is­tra­tion of the sub­scrip­tion, the device, IP address and MAC address of the device from which the trans­fers were made are unknown. The recip­i­en­t’s acquir­ing bank has not been iden­ti­fied. But in the case there is a “secret wit­ness” who claims that Abramov, in a con­ver­sa­tion with him, said some­thing approv­ing about Navalny, and to prove his extrem­ist thoughts, Abramov’s Facebook posts were used (in 99% of cas­es, far from specifics, but on the con­trary — writ­ten in Aesopian lan­guage, with a large dose of sar­casm or irony). There is a lin­guis­tic exam­i­na­tion of the scientist’s posts in the case, how­ev­er, T-invari­ant more than once wrote about the neg­a­tive role this “exper­tise” plays in the mod­ern Russian legal process. 

Abramov’s case is unprece­dent­ed, even by the stan­dards of Putin’s last term. Firstly, for the first time, a clear­ly “polit­i­cal” crim­i­nal case was opened against such a major aca­d­e­m­ic leader — a cor­re­spond­ing mem­ber of the Russian Academy of Sciences, a long-term head of a large research insti­tute, and a cura­tor of the super­com­put­er “union” pro­gram (between Russia and Belarus). Secondly, in rela­tion to Abramov, the FSB applied the clas­sic Soviet prac­tice of “puni­tive psy­chi­a­try” (sent to a psy­chi­atric clin­ic for 2 weeks). Abramov is one of many caught up in the “FBK extrem­ist case”: how has been count­ed by the pub­li­ca­tion “Cold”, there are already 53 peo­ple involved. There are many ran­dom peo­ple among them: some­one left an inscrip­tion in the snow, and some­one sent a dona­tion of 200 rubles. The lat­est unprece­dent­ed case in Dolgoprudny: pro­gram­mer Alexey Malyarevsky received 7 years for a dona­tion of $150.

The details of Abramov’s case raise many ques­tions. In par­tic­u­lar, about how much the court will assess the sever­i­ty of the crime of a sci­en­tist who, accord­ing to inves­ti­ga­tors, trans­ferred only $75, if for an FBK dona­tion of $150 they now give 7 years? And how does this insignif­i­cant amount (pre­sent­ed, but still not proven) look against the back­ground of a whole year of work by inves­ti­ga­tors, detec­tives, psy­chi­a­trists and an entire region­al psy­chi­atric clin­ic (Abramov him­self makes min­i­mal cal­cu­la­tions and asks the same ques­tion in your diaries from the hospital). 

How the case of Sergei Abramov developed

Let us recall that the search took place at Abramov’s place on April 10, 2023, and after that he spent 1.5 days in a pre-tri­al deten­tion cen­ter. On April 12, 2023, a tri­al was held in Yaroslavl, at which the sci­en­tist was charged with financ­ing extrem­ist activ­i­ties — a crime under Part 1 of Art. 282.3 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. We are talk­ing about trans­fer­ring mon­ey from Abramov’s PayPal account to the account of Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation. Also, accord­ing to inves­ti­ga­tors, the sci­en­tist “sup­port­ed the activ­i­ties of an extrem­ist orga­ni­za­tion” and financed it, “adher­ing to extrem­ist views and posi­tions, and being dis­sat­is­fied with the cur­rent gov­ern­ment in Russia and the poli­cies pursued.” 

Simultaneously with the fil­ing of charges, on April 12, 2023, Abramov was includ­ed in the Rosfinmonitoring list of extrem­ists and ter­ror­ists. Thus, all per­son­al accounts were blocked, as well as the accounts of all legal enti­ties asso­ci­at­ed with him (in this case, 4 com­pa­nies involved, among oth­er things, in super­com­put­er technologies). 

Court sent Abramova under house arrest for a peri­od until June 10, 2023, with­out the right of cor­re­spon­dence and exter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tions. This became wide­ly known from media pub­li­ca­tions only a month lat­er — May 11, 2023. On October 10, 2023, he was released from house arrest and placed on his own recognizance. 

November 30, 2023 in the Leninsky District Court of Yaroslavl sat­is­fied FSB peti­tion to place Abramov in a psy­chi­atric hos­pi­tal for at least three weeks for an inpa­tient exam­i­na­tion. After this, Abramov was placed in a psy­chi­atric hos­pi­tal and was released on December 30, 2023. 

On January 30, 2024, Abramov was sum­moned for ques­tion­ing and was told that the in-patient exam­i­na­tion recog­nized he is com­plete­ly sane. After this, Abramov gave a detailed inter­view with the T-invari­ant pub­li­ca­tion and pub­lished his diary entries about two weeks in a psy­chi­atric hospital. 

Waiting for a tight deadline

The sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty, con­cerned about the fate of Abramov, and the scientist’s rel­a­tives are prepar­ing for an inap­pro­pri­ate­ly harsh punishment. 

On the part of the mem­bers of the Russian Academy of Sciences there was only one rather restrained state­ment of sup­port addressed to Sergei Abramov on behalf of the July 1 Club, an infor­mal asso­ci­a­tion of some mem­bers of the Academy. The lead­er­ship of the Russian Academy of Sciences not only nev­er pub­licly sup­port­ed the sci­en­tist, but did not even respond mean­ing­ful­ly to let­ters from Abramov’s rel­a­tives. There were no pub­lic actions on the part of the IT community. 

However, infor­ma­tion and pub­li­ca­tions about the Abramov case in inter­na­tion­al press caused con­cern among for­eign colleagues. 

“The American Physical Society’s Committee on International Freedom of Scientists (APS-CIFS) is aware of the sit­u­a­tion involv­ing Sergey Abramov, and we are close­ly mon­i­tor­ing devel­op­ments as they unfold”, said T-invari­ant Professor of Brown University, Fellow of the American Physical Society, Chair of the American Physical Society’s Committee on International Freedom of Scientists, Kenneth Breuer.

Personal matter

Sergey Abramov born in 1957 in Moscow, grad­u­at­ed from Moscow State University in 1980. M.V. Lomonosov. Since 1986, he has been work­ing at the A. K. Ailamazyan Institute of Software Systems of the Russian Academy of Sciences, includ­ing as direc­tor from 2003 to 2022. For a long time, Abramov com­bined the lead­er­ship of the insti­tute with the post of rec­tor of the University of Pereslavl, cre­at­ed at the same insti­tute. Specialist in the field of sys­tem pro­gram­ming and infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy (super­com­put­er sys­tems, telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nolo­gies, the­o­ry of con­struc­tive meta­sys­tems and meta­com­put­ing). Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (2006). Previously, he was the Russian direc­tor of the SKIF and SKIF-GRID pro­grams for the devel­op­ment of super­com­put­ers (a project of the union state of Russia and Belarus). According to Abramov him­self, the FSB pre­vi­ous­ly checked him on charges of trea­son (read about this in a detailed inter­view sci­en­tist T-invariant).

Editors  14.04.2024

Abramov, computers, repression, ФСБ