The United States announced sanctions on Friday targeting 12 senior executives of the Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab, a day after the US prohibited the sale of the company's widely-used antivirus software due to what it called "national security" concerns.

The comprehensive sanctions affect several of Kaspersky Lab's top executives, including its chief operating officer, but do not extend to the chief executive or the company itself, according to a statement from the Treasury Department.

"Today's action against the leadership of Kaspersky Lab underscores our commitment to ensure the integrity of our cyber domain and to protect our citizens against malicious cyber threats," said Brian Nelson, the US Treasury's under-secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence.

He added that "the United States will take action where necessary to hold accountable those who would seek to facilitate or otherwise enable these activities."

'Unjustified and baseless'

The Treasury's sanctions follow the Commerce Department's announcement a day earlier that it was prohibiting the Moscow-based cybersecurity firm from offering its popular antivirus products in the United States.

The decision came after an investigation, which claimed that Kaspersky's operations in the US posed a "national security threat".

This marks the first time such a measure has been taken under an executive order from Donald Trump's presidency, which authorized the Commerce Department to determine if specific companies present a national security risk.

Kaspersky called the Treasury's sanctions "unjustified and baseless," asserting that they were driven by geopolitical concerns rather than a thorough assessment of the integrity of its products and operations, as per a statement to AFP.

"Neither Kaspersky nor its management team has any ties to any government," it added, calling the Treasury's accusations "pure speculation, which lacks concrete evidence of a threat posed to US national security."

In response to the US move, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Friday that "Kaspersky Lab is a company which is very, very competitive on the international level." 

"This is a favorite method of unfair competition from the part of the United States. They resort to such tactics every time," he stressed.

On his account, US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller stated Friday that the company was subject to the "jurisdiction, control, or direction of the Russian government, which could exploit the privileged access to obtain sensitive data."

This poses "an unacceptable risk to US national security or the safety and security of US persons," he stressed in a statement.

Dive deeper

Despite being headquartered in Moscow, Kaspersky has offices in 31 countries, serving over 400 million users and 270,000 corporate clients across more than 200 countries, according to the Commerce Department.

The new sanctions target several senior leaders at Kaspersky, including long-serving Chief Operating Officer Andrei Tikhonov and Chief Legal Officer Igor Chekunov, the Treasury Department stated.

Other individuals sanctioned include Deputy CEO Daniil Borshchev, Chief Business Development Officer and board member Andrei Efremov, and Head of Corporate Communications Denis Zenkin.

Read more: US, Europe afraid of sanctioning Kaspersky Lab: WSJ