WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Russia sought to use spies to get more information about high-frequency trading in a potential bid to destabilize the market, according to a court document released by the U.S. government on Monday.
The U.S. government on Monday made one arrest and charged two other diplomats with spying on behalf of Russia.
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But one of the topics Russia wanted to know more about is a topic the U.S. government is also struggling to comprehend: high-frequency trading. Russia apparently wanted to use such trading to destabilize the market.
According to the FBI, a banker, Evgency Buryakov, was told to tell a Russian state-owned news outlet to get information on three specific questions. This was a conversation he had with the Russian trade representative, Igor Sporyshev, as translated by the FBI:
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Buryakov: How they are used, the mechanisms of use for destabilization of the markets.
Sporyshev: Mechanism — of — use — for —market — stabilization in modern conditions.
Buryakov: For destabilization.
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High-frequency trading has been blamed by some for adding instability to markets.
In the book “Flash Boys,” author Michael Lewis says a surprisingly large number of the people pulled in by the big Wall Street banks to build the technology for high-frequency trading were Russians.
One, former Goldman Sachs programmer Sergey Aleynikov, was convicted of stealing trade secrets, before his conviction was overturned.
Full article: Russia tried to learn how to use high-speed trading to rock market, U.S. says (Market Watch)
