ITG clarified that Leontiev was detained on September 15, after which contact with him was lost. After 72 hours had passed, the company turned to the Russian embassy for help.
According to ComNews, by the evening of September 20, Leontiev was still in the custody of law enforcement authorities. At the same time, ITG complained about the shutdown of equipment belonging to its subsidiary ITGlobal.com NL B.V. in the Equinix AM2 data center in Amsterdam.
ITG founder Dmitry Gachko said that the “precedent that occurred” showed that basic guarantees of security, stability, and protection for private business in the European region are “no longer determined by law”. He added that the company is closing the perimeter of its presence in “unfriendly countries” and will withdraw infrastructure from the Netherlands, the United States, and Canada.
At the same time, ITG will not physically move the equipment: the company is terminating agreements with partners and offering clients to transfer data to other sites. ITG expects to direct its main investments, technologies, and development teams to the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America.
Previously, ITG’s Dutch division was involved in a legal dispute with the American company ServiceNow over the alleged theft of software code by SimpleOne, a Russian software developer from ITG. It is unknown whether Leontiev’s detention is connected to this case.
Gachko also accused the Dutch authorities of introducing a “lawlessness regime” and linked the situation to the Russian citizenship of the business owners. On July 13, the EU Council added him to the sanctions list under a regime related to human rights violations in Russia, and in the decision he was named the ultimate owner and CEO of VAS Experts — a company that develops and supplies equipment and software for the system of operational-search activities (SORM), which allows the FSB to access phone calls, internet traffic, and other subscriber data.
In addition, Gachko is developing a business in Russian-annexed Sevastopol: he founded the IT Park Rus technopark, which is part of the ITG ecosystem. The company plans to build its third phase for about 4 billion rubles and increase the number of specialists working there to 5,000.
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