Rubio hired tech firm after Kremlin-link warnings surfaced: report

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the State Department in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 24, 2026. REUTERS/Ken Cedeno

The State Department Secretary Marco Rubio awarded a $50,000 contract to Oxygen Forensics months after allegations about the firm’s Russian ownership and links to Kremlin agencies circulated within the federal government, according to a report.

PunchUp reported that the State Department granted the contract on August 28 via the U.S. Embassy in Zagreb, Croatia. The records indicate that the purchase order amounting to $49,999.76 was for "ICITAP - OXYGEN SOFTWARE", which is supporting a Justice Department initiative that collaborates with foreign law enforcement agencies. The award has a possible end date of September 1, 2027.

The contract was reached several months after Max Weissberg, a former employee of Oxygen, made a public claim that the Virginia-based company had been secretly controlled by Russian interests and that its software had been developed in Russia. According to PunchUp, Oxygen admitted in a lawsuit filed in August that government customers had asked the company about Weissberg's allegations as early as February 23 and that a document relating to the claims had been circulated among the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies.

Oxygen brought its lawsuit against Weissberg on August 28, the same day the contract with the State Department was awarded. The company rejected his claims, charged him with defamation and demanded damages in excess of $1.85 million.

On September 23, the Justice Department announced that Lee Reiber, the CEO of Oxygen, and the Russian national Oleg Sergeyevich Davydov had been arrested and accused of conspiring to commit wire fraud. The prosecutors claim that Reiber had hidden from American agencies the fact that Oxygen had been owned and controlled by five Russian nationals via a holding company based in Cyprus and that the company's software had been developed in Russia.

Federal prosecutors state that those same five Russians were also the owners of a Russian company which supplied versions of the software to customers allegedly comprising the Federal Security Service, the Investigative Committee of Russia, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. It is alleged that the Russian owners of Oxygen kept on making major decisions of the company after their names had been taken off the public corporate records as a result of the broadened U.S. sanctions against Russia in 2022.

The Justice Department stated that its complaint does not claim that Oxygen's software included malicious code or had been used to gain unauthorized access to customers' systems or data; Reiber and Davydov are considered innocent until they have been proven guilty.

PunchUp also stated that in May 2025 the State Department gave Oxygen a contract which could be worth about $180,664.

When asked if the officials had known about the ownership allegations at the time the August agreement was approved, the State Department told PunchUp that it was “aware” of the claims and said it “takes seriously the security of its systems and the integrity of its procurement processes.”

From Your Site Articles