PANews reported on March 7 that according to an announcement by the U.S. Department of Justice, the United States, Germany, and Finland jointly took action to shut down the online infrastructure of the Garantex crypto exchange, which was suspected of money laundering for transnational criminal and terrorist organizations and violating sanctions, processing at least $96 billion in crypto transactions since 2019. The Department of Justice also announced the indictment of two Garantex managers, including Aleksej Besciokov (46), a Russian resident of Lithuania, and Aleksandr Mira Serda (40), a Russian resident of the United Arab Emirates, accusing them of conspiracy to launder money, violate sanctions, and operate an unlicensed remittance business.
Case details:
• Garantex has long provided funding channels for criminal activities such as hacking, ransomware, and drug trafficking, and has taken measures to cover up illegal transactions.
• In April 2022, the US Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Garantex, but it continued to trade with US companies and circumvented sanctions by changing its crypto wallet address.
• U.S. law enforcement agencies have frozen $26 million in funds involved in the case and seized Garantex-related domain names (Garantex.org, Garantex.io, Garantex.academy) on March 6.
• German and Finnish police seized its servers, and US law enforcement agencies obtained copies of Garantex’s customer and financial databases.
Besciokov and Mira Serda face up to 20 years in prison for money laundering conspiracy, and Besciokov faces additional charges of violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and operating an unlicensed money transmitting business, which carry up to 20 years and five years in prison, respectively.
Yesterday, Tether froze $28 million USDT of Garantex , a Russian sanctioned exchange .
