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Spies in the colony: employees of the Russian supplier of the Apple secretly gave the Chinese the secrets of the production of sapphire glass

The judge of the Stavropol sentenced a group of industrial spies who sold Russian know-how of production of sapphires to the Chinese. The investigators assessed the damage to the company from their illegal actions in 14 million roubles. The leader of the group, Andrey Shamin, received 2.5 years in a penal colony, Prosecutor’s office has appealed the sentence as too lenient.

As reported Opengaz, criminals are hunted technology to produce synthetic sapphire, which was developed in Stavropol engineers. Sapphires are used in the production of LED TVs, smartphones, flashlights, and much more.

Moreover, if nature takes 50,000 years to “grow” a stone, in the laboratory it takes only 10 days. In the world today uses a process of growing crystals, invented by Soviet engineers for almost a hundred years ago.

The world leader in sapphire manufacturing is a factory “the crystal”: grown in Stavropol crystals used in “smart” watches Apple Watch and the iPhone. All of its customers, the plant did not disclose, saying that trade secret. But in the hands of factory “the crystal” played the devaluation of the ruble: production is the same as before, but to sell grown sapphires for export was twice more profitable.

Closest competitors of the company in Stavropol is a large manufactories from Japan, Taiwan, China… That the Chinese and decided to buy the secrets of growing crystals. But first “bought” one of the employees of the plant Andrei Shamina.

He found a former employee of the region Nikolay Tarasov, who in turn, agreed to sell know-how with Edward Belozerov and Alexei Borodin (last worked in a factory as a system administrator, that is, had access to all computers and data stores). To have accomplices no doubt, Shamin paid them a generous down payment – $1000 each.

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Following were “recruited” and even the Deputy chief of mechanical workshop for the production of Dmitry Fedotov. He was paid $12 000 for what he in Feb 2013 got the information about the use of ceramic screens. At the same time, Fedotov promised to take on a job at a Chinese plant to use its experience in the production of sapphires.

And the system administrator Borodin copied from the office computer information about the sapphire growth on the stick. And this know-how also leaked to Chinese competitors, who generously thanked the spies, paying them a total of $130 000. But the damage the “Crystal” from two theft of trade secrets amounted to 16 million rubles.

All five participants in the criminal chain was arrested by the operatives of the regional Department of the FSB and was investigating a big case the Main investigatory management GU the Ministry of internal Affairs. All five were charged with article 183 of the criminal code (Illegal receipt and disclosure of information constituting a commercial secret, with the major damage”). In addition, during searches in the house of an unemployed Evgenia Tarasova found explosive.

Four detained members of the group admitted that they received money from Shamina. He was elected as a preventive measure of house arrest, but the man tried to escape from investigation authorities, after which he was taken into custody in jail. Sentenced him to 2.5 years of imprisonment in a colony-settlement (the verdict has already been appealed by the Prosecutor’s office because of the softness). Other members of the criminal group received 1.5 to 2.5 years of imprisonment, but the punishment has released in connection with Amnesty to the 70th anniversary of the great Victory.

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