Son of Russian software maker missing
The 20-year-old son of a Russian computer security maker has gone missing in Moscow amid reports that he was the victim of a kidnapping.
Ivan Kaspersky, the 20-year-old son of Eugene Kaspersky, the founder of the anti-virus software company Kaspersky Lab, has been missing since April 19.
The Russian news site Life News is reporting that kidnappers are demanding a payment of 3 million euros in return for freeing the fourth-year Moscow State University student. A Kaspersky spokesman told CNET it would have no comment on the reports.
"We don't have any information to share at the moment. I'll let you know if that changes," the spokesman said in an e-mail to CNET today.
Given their high public profile and wealth, technology executives in the U.S. these days lead a more guarded life than they once did. The turning point can be traced to 1992, when Charles Geschke, a co-founder of Adobe Systems, was abducted from the company parking lot at gunpoint and held for $650,000 in ransom. After four days, he was rescued by the FBI., shaken by the ordeal but physically unharmed.
Since the collapse of the U.S.S.R., high-profile kidnappings and extortion has become more prevalent in Russia. In 2004, for instance, the 13-year-old son of a best-selling author was kidnapped and then killed by his abductor. In 2009, the 17-year-old son of a top executive at the Russian company Roseneft was kidnapped. At the time, the Russian newspaper "Novaya gazeta" listed eight similar cases in the previous four years, where businessmen and their relatives were abducted by criminals and held for ransom. He was held for two months but released under unclear circumstances. (Two Chechens were later convicted in the kidnapping. Russian authorities contended they were tied to Islamist militants.)
Kaspersky Lab began in 1997. By 2008, it was ranked by IDG as the fourth-largest software security company in the world.
Although Kaspersky Lab is not commenting, The Moscow Times reported that the younger Kaspersky had listed his full address on the social network Vkontakte.ru. The privacy settings on his page have since been changed and access to the information is now closed to unauthorized users, according to the paper.