MOSCOW (AP) - One of Russia’s internet pioneers has been sentenced to two years in prison on charges of abuse of office that he has rejected, a verdict that is seen by some as politically driven.
A Russian internet pioneer is handed a 2-year prison sentence by Moscow court
MOSCOW (AP) - One of Russia’s internet pioneers has been sentenced to two years in prison on charges of abuse of office that he has rejected, a verdict that is seen by some as politically driven.
Alexei Soldatov, who served as deputy minister of communications in 2008-2010, was convicted Monday on charges related to a deal to transfer a pool of IP addresses to a foreign-based organization. Soldatov and his lawyers rejected the charges as unfounded.
Moscow’s Savyolovsky District Court also convicted and sentenced Soldatov’s business partner Yevgeny Antipov to 1 1/2 years in the same criminal case.
In 1990, Soldatov, a nuclear physicist by training, led the Relcom computer network that made the first Soviet connection to the global internet. After the 1991 Soviet collapse, Soldatov helped establish other organizations that provided the technical backbone of the Russian internet ever since.