VChK-OGPU and Rucriminal.info have learned the astonishing story of former Microsoft senior architect Alexey Kibkalo. He was convicted in the US for illegally distributing Windows operating system code, but upon returning to Russia, he began working at Sberbank and, according to him, befriended Herman Gref. He was then arrested with a wide variety of drugs. According to Kibkalo's initial testimony, he supplied drugs to the entire management of the state bank. However, he then unexpectedly recanted, which had a very positive impact on his future. He was initially sentenced to 11 years in prison, but his sentence was almost immediately reduced by more than half.
Alexey Kibkalo had worked at Microsoft since 2005, first in the Moscow office, then moved to France, and then became Microsoft's chief architect for the Middle East. In 2012, the company's management began expressing dissatisfaction with Kibkalo, and as it later turned out, he decided to take revenge by leaking a copy of the then-unreleased Windows 8 and everything needed to activate it to the blogger. The programmer asked for Windows 8 and the activation tool to be released online so that as many users as possible could use the new product for free. Kibkalo also gave the code created by Microsoft to a French tech blogger for distribution.
In March 2014, Alexey Kibkalo was arrested by the FBI and charged with theft of trade secrets. He fully admitted his guilt and, as a result, received pretrial detention and a small fine. Kibkalo was also deported from the United States to Russia. In Moscow, he began working closely with Sber. According to our information, he was assisted in this by Sber's then-chief architect, Alexey Murzov, who had worked with Kibkalo at Microsoft.
This collaboration lasted almost 10 years and, as it later turned out, had a very interesting character.
One day, operatives detained a Sber employee with a small quantity of drugs, and he agreed to hand over the supplier in exchange for his freedom. This supplier was unknown and, so to speak, didn't work with a wide range of customers. Officially, the police reportedly received "operational information." As a result, they raided Kibkalo's apartment on Likhov Lane in Moscow, where they found mephedrone, MDMA, and other substances packaged in small packets. A total of over 40 grams.
Unexpectedly, Kibkalo began pouring out his heart to the operatives. He explained that he himself had become addicted to drugs and had personally found sources of high-quality drugs. However, it quickly became clear that his skills at Sber were in much greater demand than those of a programmer. Consequently, he began supplying drugs to Sber's managers and senior executives. He even confided that he had visited German Gref several times in the presidential administration's Arkhangelskoye settlement and had developed a good relationship with the head of Sber. Kibkalo even revealed his iPhone password, and one of his messaging apps contained messages with Sber employees, clearly not related to IT solutions. Incidentally, five years ago, Kibkalo wrote on social media that his friend Alexey Murzov, Sber's chief architect, "died right at his workplace." He did not specify the cause of death.
But the case never materialized. Police brass, hearing Gref's name, clutched their heads. And Kibkalo himself, after an explanatory interview, began to testify that he kept the drugs exclusively for personal use. And this silence clearly played a positive role for him. The court initially sentenced him to 11 years in prison. However, a higher court reclassified the charges from “large-scale drug trafficking” to “illegal drug acquisition” and reduced the sentence to five years in prison.
