The Rotterdam District Court sentenced a 43-year-old man to three years in prison for working at ASML and NXP companies and passing their corporate information to a Russian citizen, as noted by «Mediazona»* on the court's website.
The report states that the accused shared information with the Russian for 18 months. The engineer copied data from the servers of ASML and NXP, which produce microelectronics, for over four years. The release states that he passed information to the Russian citizen about the setup of production lines for manufacturing microchips.
The man was found guilty of violating EU sanctions imposed against Russia in 2014 after the annexation of Crimea. During the hearings, he said: «I kept the ASML files for my own use. <...> Was it possible to import these files into Russia? I didn't ask».
The prosecution could not prove that the man received money for passing information to the Russian, although during the hearings, department representatives indicated that he deposited 43.9 thousand euros in cash into his account from 2021 to 2024. The nationality of the accused is also not specified.
The publication Nieuwsuur calls him a Russian named Herman A., who received higher education in Russia and worked in Russian technology companies. In 2015, he came to the Netherlands and started working at the startup Mapper Lithography, which was acquired by ASML after bankruptcy.
Journalists also reported that the defendant was a participant in a chat called «Import Substitution in Zele». The prosecution considered that «Zele» refers to the Moscow suburb of Zelenograd, where the microelectronics enterprise «Micron», part of «Rostec», is located.
Earlier, the Netherlands' General Intelligence and Security Service reported that the man communicated with a representative of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service. However, he was not charged with espionage, and the court found the man guilty only of violating sanctions and computer hacking.
* Recognized in Russia as a «foreign agent».