Senior U.S. law enforcement officials have raised concerns over the upcoming acquisition of instant messaging service ICQ by Digital Sky Technologies, saying they may not be able to use it to track Eastern European criminals, the Financial Times reported.
Investigators say that since Russia has no agreement with the U.S. government on providing access to chat transcripts, ICQ's sale may hamper their investigations.
In April, Moscow-based DST reached an agreement with AOL to acquire the instant messaging service for $187.5 million.
Representatives from the U.S. Treasury Department's Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which can make recommendations on transactions on national security grounds, have reviewed the complaints and said the deal was unlikely to be blocked.
ICQ was founded in Israel in 1996, and its headquarters remained there after AOL bought the service for $400 million in 1998. Israel and the United States have an agreement allowing for the provision of chat transcripts of people under investigation for criminal activity.
DST already owns a stake in Russia's most popular e-mail service Mail.ru, as well as social networks Odnoklassniki.ru and Vkontakte.ru.
In 2009, the company acquired a 2 percent stake in Facebook, the world's largest social network, and has since increased that figure to 10 percent, according to Bloomberg News.
A spokesman for DST declined to comment Wednesday, and AOL could not be reached for comment.