Krasnoyarsk Researcher Valentin Danilov Charged With High Treason

On Sunday, investigators of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, department in the Krasnoyarsk Territory officially arraigned researcher Valentin Danilov, who had earlier been arrested and detained in custody. In the presence of his lawyer Danilov was charged with high treason and fraud (article 159 of the Russian Criminal Code), according to a local FSB spokesman. Danilov faces 12 to 20 years of imprisonment on charges of high treason and 5 to 10 years on fraud charges. Valentin Danilov, a leading researcher at the Krasnoyarsk Research Institute of Heating Engineering, is accused of transferring classified information to a Chinese company dealing in the area of high-precision mechanical engineering. The FSB Krasnoyarsk Territory department believes that the information passed over by Danilov may substantially reduce the time as well as financial costs required for creating a military force armed with space-based weapons. In addition, when receiving payment for the contract work, Danilov, according to the investigators, forged official documents, which provides sufficient grounds for charging him with committing fraud. In the meantime, 20 leading Krasnoyarsk researchers led by academic Kirill Alexandrov, head of the local Institute of Physics under the Russian Academy of Sciences Siberian Branch, continue to claim that Danilov has committed no crime whatsoever. According to the scientists, when making the contract, the defendant used only the information officially declassified in 1992 and subsequently published in open scientific literature, which allowed the Chinese company not only to thoroughly study the issues in question but also commission Danilov with making a special testing stand. An appropriate contract for this work was then concluded and signed by both parties.