The Federal Security Service (FSB) launched an investigation last year against Oleg Korobeinichev, the head of the combustion kinetics laboratory at the Novosibirsk Institute of Chemical Kinetics and Combustion, and accused him of revealing sensitive information on components of a rocket propellant in one of his scientific papers prepared for a U.S. institute.
Lawyer Andrei Zhukov said prosecutors had sent a letter to Korobeinichev apologizing for "damages caused" by the criminal proceedings wrongly launched against him. The letter came after the scientist demanded a public apology for the false charges, and was signed by the deputy head of the regional prosecutor's office.
FSB investigators dropped their case against Korobeinichev in May 2007, before it went to trial. However, they refused to give details, saying the case was "classified."
Korobeinichev, 65, was awarded a research grant in 2002 under the U.S. Department of Defense scientific program to study the fundamental combustion processes in rocket fuels, which is a common practice at the Novosibirsk-based institute.
There have been several spy cases in Russia against scientists in the past three years that have been widely covered by the Russian media. Physicist Valentin Danilov was sentenced to 14 years in prison for high treason in November 2004 for allegedly passing sensitive information to China. In the summer of 2005, his term was reduced to 13 years.
In April 2004, Igor Sutyagin, head of the military technology and economics department at the Institute of the United States and Canada, was sentenced to 15 years of prison for sharing state secrets with U.S. military intelligence.
In February 2006, a Moscow court ordered that Igor Reshetin, a member of the Russian Academy of Cosmonautics, remain in custody after he was charged with sharing data on dual-purpose technologies with a Chinese corporation.
