LONDON, Oct 1 (Reuters) - Britain said on Tuesday it had

sanctioned 16 members of the Russian cyber-crime gang Evil Corp,

a group it said had been tasked by Russia to conduct operations

against NATO allies.

Evil Corp was once believed to be the most significant

cyber-crime threat in the world, Britain's National Crime Agency

(NCA) said after taking coordinated action with officials in the

United States and Australia.

"Today's sanctions send a clear message to the Kremlin that

we will not tolerate Russian cyber-attacks - whether from the

state itself or from its cyber-criminal ecosystem," foreign

minister David Lammy said in a statement.

In 2019, the U.S. indicted and sanctioned Evil Corp's

alleged leader, the Lamborghini-driving Maksim Yakubets, and put

a $5 million bounty out for information leading to his arrest.

In its latest disclosure, the NCA said the group had been

tasked by Russian intelligence services to conduct cyber-attacks

and espionage operations against NATO allies, although it gave

no further details.

Yakubets, it said, had worked with Russia's Federal Security

Service (FSB), Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) and military

intelligence unit GRU.

His father-in-law, Eduard Benderskiy, a former high-ranking

official of the FSB, was also an enabler of Evil Corp's

activities and helped protect the group after the U.S. action in

2019, the NCA said.

The British agency said Evil Corp also had close connections

with the ransomware group LockBit, which had targeted the

Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Boeing ( BA ) and Britain's

Royal Mail among others, and which Western law enforcement

agencies disrupted earlier this year.

Yakubets' right-hand man Aleksandr Ryzhenkov had been

identified as a LockBit affiliate and was involved in ransomware

attacks against numerous organisations, the NCA said.

"The action announced today has taken place in conjunction

with extensive and complex investigations by the NCA into two of

the most harmful cyber-crime groups of all time," said James

Babbage, Director General for Threats at the NCA.

Britain said among those targeted in its new sanctions,

which included asset freezes and travel bans, were Yakubets,

Artem Viktorovich Yakubets and Viktor Grigoryevich Yakubets.

In a separate announcement, the U.S. justice department said

it had indicted Ryzhenkov for deploying a strain of ransomware

known as BitPaymer to attack numerous victims in Texas and

throughout the country.

"Today's charges against Ryzhenkov detail how he and his

conspirators stole the sensitive data of innocent Americans and

then demanded ransom," said Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco.

"With law enforcement partners here and around the world, we

will continue to put victims first and show these criminals

that, in the end, they will be the ones paying for their

crimes."