Eugene Kaspersky: Co-Founder of Kaspersky Lab, the US Bans and the Sanctions in Poland and Ukraine

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Sanctions status — checked 18 October 2026

Not found on the OFAC SDN, UK OFSI or EU consolidated lists.

Absence from these three lists does not mean no restrictions apply elsewhere: other countries and earlier listings are covered in the sanctions section below. Checked against the OFAC SDN list, the UK OFSI consolidated list and the EU consolidated list. Sanctions lists change without notice — verify against the primary source before relying on this.

Current figure: Forbes puts Eugene Kaspersky’s net worth at $2 billion as of 18 October 2026 (Forbes profile). Estimates are revised continuously and Forbes and Bloomberg frequently disagree.

Eugene Kaspersky is a Russian software entrepreneur and the co-founder and chief executive of the cybersecurity company Kaspersky, known until 2019 as Kaspersky Lab. He trained at the KGB’s higher school in the 1980s, a fact he has acknowledged, and has repeatedly denied that his company works for the Russian state. The United States banned Kaspersky software from federal systems in 2017 and from sale to US customers in 2024, and sanctioned twelve of the company’s executives, but not Kaspersky himself. Poland and Ukraine have sanctioned him personally.

  • Born: 4 October 1965 in Novorossiysk, Soviet Union (Vedomosti, Kommersant)
  • Education: KGB Higher School, faculty of cryptography, communications and informatics, graduated 1987
  • Known for: co-founder of Kaspersky Lab (1997), chief executive since 2007
  • Sanctions as of October 2026: Poland (since 26 April 2022), Ukraine (since 19 October 2022). Not listed by the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Canada or Switzerland.

Early life and the KGB school

Kaspersky was born on 4 October 1965 in Novorossiysk, the son of an engineer and an archivist (Kommersant, 23 May 2025, Vedomosti). He attended the Kolmogorov boarding school for physics and mathematics at Moscow State University, finishing in 1982, and then studied at the technical faculty of the KGB Higher School, today part of the FSB Academy. He graduated in 1987 as a mathematical engineer from its faculty of cryptography, communications and informatics (Vedomosti, Kommersant, Wired via Brookings, 2012).

From 1987 to 1991 he worked at a research institute of the Soviet Ministry of Defence (Vedomosti, Kommersant). Kaspersky has acknowledged that he graduated from a KGB-sponsored school and worked for the Soviet Defence Ministry (The Moscow Times, 15 September 2017). According to his company biography, his work on computer viruses began in 1989, when his own computer was infected with the Cascade virus (Kaspersky). From 1991 to 1997 he worked at the Moscow technology centre KAMI, where the antivirus program AVP was developed (Vedomosti).

Kaspersky Lab

Kaspersky Lab was founded on 26 June 1997 (Kaspersky, 12 July 2012). Its co-founders were Eugene Kaspersky, Alexey De-Monderik, Vadim Bogdanov and Kaspersky’s then wife Natalya Kaspersky, who became the first general director (Vedomosti, Kommersant). Eugene Kaspersky led the company’s virus research and became chief executive in 2007 (Kommersant, Kaspersky). In 2019 the company renamed itself Kaspersky (Kaspersky). It is still based in Moscow, and in 2025 and 2026 Vedomosti and Kommersant still listed him as its chief executive (Kommersant, 2025, Vedomosti).

In 2009 he received the State Prize of the Russian Federation for Science and Technology, presented in the Kremlin by President Dmitry Medvedev (Kaspersky, 30 April 2009). Since December 2022 he has sat on an expert council attached to the Russian government (Vedomosti, Kommersant).

In April 2011 his son was kidnapped in Moscow and held for ransom. The kidnappers demanded 3 million euros. Police, the FSB and the OMON special police unit freed him on 24 April 2011 and arrested the kidnappers (AFP via Space Daily, 24 April 2011, RAPSI, 27 November 2012). On 3 June 2013 a Moscow court sentenced four men to between 7 and 11 years in prison, and the Moscow City Court upheld the sentences in November 2013 (Pravo.ru, 3 June 2013, RAPSI, 12 November 2013).

US measures against the company

On 13 September 2017 the US Department of Homeland Security ordered federal agencies to remove Kaspersky-branded products. It said that, in consultation with other agencies, it had determined that the risks presented by these products justified the order (CISA, BOD 17-01). Congress then barred federal use of Kaspersky Lab products from 1 October 2018 (Federal Register, 15 June 2018). A US appeals court upheld the dismissal of Kaspersky Lab’s legal challenge to both measures in 2018 (Infosecurity Magazine, 3 December 2018). In March 2022 the Federal Communications Commission added Kaspersky’s security products to its Covered List of communications equipment and services that pose “an unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States” (FCC, 25 March 2022).

In October 2017 the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times reported that Russian government hackers appeared to have used Kaspersky software to find classified files on the home computer of an employee of the US National Security Agency (Reuters via Fortune, 25 October 2017, RFE/RL, 26 September 2018). Kaspersky Lab denied the reports. In November 2017 it published its own account, saying that its antivirus program had detected malware of what it calls the Equation group on a US user’s computer in 2014, that Eugene Kaspersky had ordered the company’s copy of the code to be destroyed and that no third party had seen it (Kaspersky, 16 November 2017, Reuters via Fortune). The NSA employee, Nghia Pho, was not charged with espionage. He pleaded guilty to retaining classified national defence information and was sentenced to 66 months in prison on 25 September 2018 (CyberScoop, RFE/RL). We found no court ruling that attributes any involvement to Kaspersky.

On 20 June 2024 the US Commerce Department banned Kaspersky from selling its software and services to US customers. It cited “the Russian Government’s offensive cyber capabilities and capacity to influence or direct Kaspersky’s operations” and added three Kaspersky companies to its Entity List for “their cooperation with Russian military and intelligence authorities” (US Commerce Department, 20 June 2024). New contracts were banned from 20 July 2024 and software updates from 29 September 2024 (Federal Register, 24 June 2024). The next day the US Treasury sanctioned twelve executives and senior managers of Kaspersky Lab. The Treasury stated: “OFAC has not designated Kaspersky Lab, its parent or subsidiary companies, or its CEO” (US Treasury, 21 June 2024). Kaspersky said it “does not engage in activities which threaten U.S. national security” and called the Treasury’s allegations speculation without credible evidence (Kaspersky, 21 June 2024, Interfax, 24 June 2024). In July 2024 the company announced that it would wind down its US business (AP via NY1, 16 July 2024).

Kaspersky has denied ties to the Russian government on many occasions. In May 2017 he called speculation about Russian government influence “unfounded conspiracy theories” (CyberScoop, 11 May 2017). In November 2017 he told Reuters: “If the Russian government comes to me and asks me to [do] anything wrong, or my employees, I will move the business out of Russia” (Reuters via The Financial Express, 29 November 2017). In September 2017 he accepted an invitation to testify before a committee of the US House of Representatives, but he was not on the agenda when the committee scheduled its hearing on Kaspersky products for 25 October 2017 (The Moscow Times, iTWire, 20 October 2017).

Sanctions

CountryListedStatus in October 2026
Poland26 April 2022Listed: asset freeze, ban on making funds available, entry ban
Ukraine19 October 2022Listed (Decree 727/2022, ten years)
United States–Not on the OFAC SDN list; twelve Kaspersky Lab executives are
United Kingdom–Not on the UK sanctions list
European Union–Not on the EU consolidated list
Canada–Not on Canada’s consolidated autonomous sanctions list
Switzerland–Not on the Swiss sanctions list

Poland’s interior ministry put Kaspersky on its national sanctions list on 26 April 2022, when it published a list of 15 people and 35 companies (Polish interior ministry, RMF24, 26 April 2022). His assets in Poland are frozen and he is barred from entering the country. The ministry based the listing on his education at the KGB school, the US ban on Kaspersky software and the technical capabilities of the company’s widely used products. It described him as a prominent entrepreneur linked to Russia’s special services (Polish interior ministry). Poland’s list also includes Kaspersky Lab and three Polish companies connected with the distribution of its products. Ukraine sanctioned him in its decision of 19 October 2022, put into force by Decree 727/2022 for ten years (annex to Decree 727/2022). We found no statement by Kaspersky on either listing and no court challenge against them.

We checked the US, UK, Canadian and Polish lists on 11 October 2026, the Swiss list of 5 October 2026 and the EU list as of its review of 22 September 2026. We found no record of a criminal investigation against Eugene Kaspersky.

About this profile

This profile was rewritten in October 2026. The 2022 version said that Kaspersky studied at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, worked at a research institute “affiliated with the KGB” and founded his company in 1991. In fact he studied at the KGB Higher School, then worked at a Defence Ministry research institute, and the company was founded in 1997. The old version also said that he had testified before the US Congress several times, sat on the board of INTERPOL, belonged to the Russian Academy of Sciences, had received the Order of Honour and a Microsoft award, was an art collector and had spoken at an FSB conference in 2009. We found no source for any of these statements. It said that the NSA employee was charged with espionage; he was convicted of retaining classified information. Its account of the 2011 kidnapping gave the wrong date and claimed that a friend at the FSB helped to free his son, which no source supports. These passages have been removed or corrected. The net worth figure in the box at the top of this page comes from Forbes and carries its date.

Sources

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