Vladislav Klyushin was with a measure a horrible day. The judge in his case set aside his advocates ‘arguments and his friends’ appeal for leniency. She imposed a difficult sentence: nine years in the US federal prison, above an order to forfeit a fortune, $ 34 million.

But if Klyushin was upset about the verdict, he didn’t show it. The then 42-year-old Technical Executive of Moscow equalist-with a smile on his pinchable cheeks and fearless, just as he was during his arrest near a Swiss ski resort in March 2021, his months of detention in Switzerland, his extradition to the United States that December, his accusation and the front of the cheating. Klyushin “always had a confidence that the Russians would finally return,” one of his defensive lawyers told me. He seems to be sure that his protectors in the Kremlin would save him to serve his full sentence.

There were times when that certainty looked Hocksure. America’s federal prison system had 35 Russian citizens. Not everyone did not trade everyone. His family and friends were upset. However, within less than a year, Klyushin was proven correct. On August 1, 2024, he was unfit and put a plane back to Moscow one of the 24 people involved in the largest, most complicated American-Russian prisoner exchange ever.

You probably heard something about the exchange. This is the one who brought the reporter for Wall Street Journal Evan Gershkovich and former American Marine Paul Whelan to the United States-and to Russia a Kremlin-linked assassin and a man-and-woman duo returned from spies who were so deeply sheltered that their children were not taught. In the cover of the exchange, Klyushin was treated as a footnote. It was a mistake, if it is understandable. And not just because he was the center of one of the larger business from the inside.

The increasing conflict between the US and Russia has played in all kinds of ways over the past decade. One American prisoner was exchanged just two weeks ago; At least ten US citizens remain in jail in Russia. And now there is a Kremlin-friendly resident of the Oval Office, one who likes to be seen as offers. One is in global financial markets, with America and its allies more and more of the Russian industry of the international economy. However, there are always creative individuals who can find cracks in that wall, and Klyushin seems to be one of them. You don’t have to be too difficult to see its scheme – which eventually amounted to $ 93 million – as a way to bring capital to Russia, despite the global blocking. The competition was also evident in the streets of Moscow, where a mysterious Kremlin safety force, American citizens, who were charged with false crimes, charged and then hung them in trades for murderers, spies and co -workers of the Kremlin. It was kidnapped, taking hostage, and it is effectively done on President Vladimir Putin’s orders. Often, Americans are taken exactly for their value as assets that need to be exchanged later – to get back people like the assassin, or this financial crook, Klyushin. He was not at the top of Moscow’s trading list. But Klyushin was much closer and more important to the Kremlin than on either side of both sides.

Illustration: Vartika Sharma

To the outside World, Klyushin had a vodd-to-rich, fairy-tale life, with a greedy wedding video to prove it. In a montage later obtained by US prosecutors, Klyushin dives into a rural club pool; His bride-to-be, Zhannetta, swallows pink champagne on an outdoor airbed with chiffon and roses; He picks her up in a white Porsche -Cabriolet; She is beautiful in her backless gown; He is handsome, as a little stupid, in his tux and subtle mullet; They dance and laugh and stare at the fireworks that extend the perfect night. “I don’t know a more decent person than my husband,” Zhannetta wrote to the judge later in his case.

They had three children, who added to the two Klyushin from a previous marriage. He was in all respects a dull father, a distant of his own, a man he never met, or his stepfather, who died during a car robbery when Klyushin was 14. He originated from a childhood of poverty to build a number of businesses. First, he was in construction and marketing; Later, he was running an IT company called M13, which sold Medi and Internet monitoring software to Russian government agencies. Early clients in 2016 included the Ministry of Defense and the Office of the Presidential Administration, where Putin’s propaganda chief became an important advocate of M13. The company’s software was used to keep hundreds of telegram channels for a Kremlin who is concerned about the ‘launch of unverified or knowing false information’, according to one local news story.

Klyushin’s increase was fast and took over $ 30 million in government contracts in a decade. This confused some of his professional peers. (“The company and its owner are unknown to most in the IT community,” a respected Russian business magazine noted in 2021.) But it brought him influence and admirers. He supported the arts and rebuilt the roof of the monastery in Moscow’s Lubyanka street, a few blocks from the headquarters of the Russia’s Spying Service, the FSB. One friend later considered Klyushin as an ‘eco-activist’ (for planting ‘multiple spruplas in the garden’) and a ‘pet lover’ (his ‘favorite pet is a dog’). “Broadly spirit, well read, trained,” his family friend and tennis coach hampered. An M13 employee said that a conversation with Klyushin “is like getting a lesson from a guru.”