May 30 (UPI) — Ukrainian offices of Russian Internet company Yandex were raided in what Ukraine’s intelligence agency called a treason investigation.
The Kiev and Odessa offices of Yandex, a Russian company that says it has 11 million subscibers in Ukraine, were searched Monday by SBU, the Ukrainian Security Service.
“Law enforcement agents found that the management of the company illegally collected, accumulated and passed on the personal data of Ukrainian citizens. The information was transmitted to [Russian] security services for planning, organizing, and conducting reconnaissance, sabotage, and information-subversion operations in the country at the expense of Ukraine’s sovereignty, territorial integrity and inviolability,” an SBU statement said.
The searches came two weeks after Yandex and other popular Russian websites were banned in a decree signed by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. The May 16 decree identified 1,228 Russian individuals and 468 businesses for a nationwide blacklist, with Russian social networks specifically identified as used to “illegally collect information, stage propaganda, recruit agents and distributed pirated content.”
The action by the Ukrainian government provoked a public debate in Ukraine between those who regard it as censorship and supporters who refer to it as a long-overdue defense on national security.
Elena Gitlyanskata, an SBU spokeswoman, confirmed that the searches were conducted under article 111 of Ukraine’s Criminal Code, which refers to acts of “high treason.”
Yandex, in a company statement, said it had developed services for Ukraine since 2005 and has “conducted our business in strict accordance with Ukrainian legislation.”
