Russia has quietly arrested several suspects in one of the world’s biggest cyberbank thefts, raising hopes of a previously unseen level of official co-operation in a country that has been a haven for criminals.

The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB)has detained suspects including Viktor Pleshchuk, an alleged mastermind behind a £6m (€6.6m, $9m) attack on the payment processing unit of Royal Bank of Scotland, said people familiar with the inquiry.

The FSB asked the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the US, which has made the inquiry an international priority, to avoid scaring other targets in Russia into covering their tracks.

The FSB, FBI and the US justice department declined interview requests, while the bank said only that it was continuing to work with Authorities.

“I believe we are embarking on an era of genuine co-operation with Russian authorities,” said Don Jackson, a cybersecurity expert with SecureWorks, in Atlanta, who has documented shortcomings of Russian law enforcement.

RBS WorldPay is also based in Atlanta. A US grand jury there indic-ted Mr Pleshchuk in Novem-ber, along with Sergei Tsurikov, an Estonian, and Oleg Covelin of Moldova. At the time, a federal prosecutor said the probe had “broken the back of one of the most sophisticated computer hacking rings in the world”.

Allegedly led by Mr Pleshchuk and Mr Tsurikov, the group broke RBS encryption protecting the data associated with payroll debit cards distributed to employees of customer companies and used to draw down salaries. Counterfeit versions of the cards were used in a 12-hour period in late 2008 to withdraw cash from 2,100 ATMs in 280 cities, the indictment said.

US authorities last year said they had received crucial co-operation from other countries, including Estonia, which noticed suspicious withdrawals from ATMs in Tallinn, then arrested Mr Tsurikov and arranged his extradition.

Russian law forbids extradition of the country’s citizens, and it is unclear how severe the penalties will be for Mr Pleshchuk should he be convicted there. It is also unknown whether the St Petersburg hacker was part of an established gang protected by -officials.

Some Russian individuals and groups have used political connections to deflect investigations while allowing their equipment to be used against opponents of the Kremlin. US and UK officials have long been frustrated by their inability to make progress in Russia.

Two of the biggest US identity theft indictments in the past decade – against “carding” group Shadow-Crew and Albert Gonzalez, a hacker accused of stealing data for 40m credit and debit cards – alleged Russian involvement. No one has been arrested.

The few Russians to have been apprehended were caught overseas. But that has not always furthered official co-operation.

Michael Schuler of the FBI lured two Russians to Seattle in 2000, where they were arrested. But Russian auth-orities then said they were investigating Mr Schuler for unauthorised remote searches of the suspects’ computers in Russia.

Western authorities had been loath to fault Russia publicly as they continued to seek better relations. People familiar with the matter said the FBI believed it had improved relations in the past year by putting less emphasis on ties to the MVD, Russia’s main national law enforcement body, and going directly to the FSB, the most powerful bureaucracy in the country.

Even the FBI is unsure what broke the logjam and produced the first significant arrests in what the US agency hopes will be the start of co-operative efforts.

But Mr Jackson and other private researchers noted that Russian cybergangs, facing rising competition, had rel-eased programs designed to steal from Russian bank accounts as well as those abroad. “Russian cybercriminals no longer follow hands-off rules when it comes to motherland targets, and Russian authorities are beginning to drop the laisser faire policy,” Mr Jackson said.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/04e59450-3552-11df-9cfb-00144feabdc0.html