Russia blocks Dutch email service over mass bomb threats

MOSCOW: Russia on Thursday said it had blocked a Netherlands-based email provider, Startmail.com, used to send thousands of false bomb threats that forced the temporary closure of courts, malls, hospitals and schools.

In the authorities’ first public acknowledgement of the scale of the problem, the FSB security service said that over 1,000 emails sent to courts since late November had warned of bombs in more than 16,000 public buildings.

In Moscow alone, some 1.5 million people were affected by the evacuations of buildings, Interfax news agency reported. The latest bomb threats were issued on Thursday morning in Moscow and Saint Petersburg.

The communications watchdog, Roskomnadzor, said it blocked the provider on Thursday at the request of the Prosecutor General’s Office. It said Startmail.com had not provided Russia with information on the administrators of the addresses used.

Startmail’s site boasts that its paying customers can evade “unwanted intrusion and mass surveillance”. Russia does not believe those working for Startmail.com have anything to do with the bomb threats, Roskomnadzor said.

But the messages “created a real threat to public order” by spreading alarm among the public, and the block should “hinder carrying out such activities in the future”, the watchdog said. Neither the watchdog nor the FSB gave any explanation of the motive behind the wave of threats.

Some of the messages sent from the Startmail.com provider referred to a prominent businessman, Konstantin Malofeyev, and demanded he pay back cryptocurrency, according to media and the press service of Saint Petersburg courts.

Some threats mention 120 bitcoins worth almost $900,000 (800,000 euros), allegedly stolen from a crashed cryptocurrency exchange.

They refer to WEX, a now-defunct spinoff of BTC-e, once one of the world’s largest and most widely used digital currency exchanges, where national currencies can be exchanged for bitcoins.

The suspected head of BTC-e, Russian Alexander Vinnik, was arrested in Greece in 2017 and faces money laundering charges in several countries. Malofeyev, a businessman and founder of an investment fund, is on US and EU sanctions lists for allegedly funding pro-Russian separatist fighters in eastern Ukraine. He also runs an Orthodox Christian television channel that airs conservative views and chairs a pro-life foundation.