Russian federal agents allegedly arrest Border Service official for selling information from the closed database that helped identify the Salisbury suspects

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has reportedly carried out a massive review of the private detectives and state officials who allegedly sell information from closed databases. A source familiar with the situation told the news agency Rosbalt that the FSB has conducted more than 60 raids in the investigation.

The same source claims that the FSB has arrested a State Border Service employee in Russia’s Northwestern Federal District and a staff member at a Federal Tax Service branch. “The first [suspect] supposedly sold information about foreign travel by [Alexander] Petrov, [Ruslan] Boshirov, and several others,” the source told Rosbalt, clarifying that the arrests, however, are tied to leaking information about other persons, not the “Salisbury tourists.”

The British authorities identified Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov as the men likely responsible for poisoning double agent Sergey Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, England, this March. Investigative reporters at Bellingcat and The Insider used extracts from different closed databases to compile evidence that these two suspects are actually two Russian military intelligence agents named Alexander Mishkin and Anatoly Chepiga.