A senior FBI agent in the Boston field office wrote a highly unusual newspaper column in 2014 warning that a Russian foundation that Vekselberg controlled might be a clandestine siphon for Russia‘s intelligence services to steal cutting-edge technological secrets from American companies, as NPR‘s Tim Mak reported.

The column in the Boston Business Journal appeared in April 2014 and sought to warn Boston-area tech companies and researchers to steer clear of the Skolkovo Foundation, launched by Russian Prime Minister Dimitry Medvedev and run by Vekselberg.