The United States accuses the administrators of Garantinex for having allegedly facilitated crypto money laundering for terrorists and pirates

The United States Ministry of Justice Announced Friday Criminal accusations against the administrators of the Russian cryptocurrency exchange guarantee for having allegedly facilitated money laundering by criminal and terrorist organizations, as well as to violate American sanctions.

The two administrators are the national and Russian resident of Lithuanian Aleksej Bisciokov, 46, and Aleksandr Mira Serda, 40, a Russian national residing in the United Arab Emirates, who “knew that the criminal product was bleached through Guarantx and took measures to hide the facilitation of illegal activities on his platform”, ” According to the indictment against them.

The DOJ said that Guarantx “had received hundreds of millions of criminal products and had been used to facilitate various crimes, including piracy, ransomware, terrorism and drug trafficking” and that the exchange has treated at least $ 96 billion in cryptocurrency transactions since 2019.

In the indictment, prosecutors accuse Bisciokov of personally authorizing transactions linked to cybercriminals, including known North-Covernous pirates under the name of Lazarus Group.

The announcement of the indictment came a day after the American secret services and a coalition of law enforcement organizations has removed and seized the official Garantex websitesReplace their content with a banner featuring agency logos and announcing the site crisis.

When Techcrunch contacted three guarantee email addresses listed on its official page before withdrawal, our emails were returned as not delivered. Guarantx did not respond to several requests for comments via his official telegram channel.

Bisciokov and Mira will both be accused of a money laundering plot, while Bisciokov is also accused of conspiracy to violate the sanctions and the conspiracy, and of exploiting a business transmission company without license. Both are risking a maximum of 20 years in prison for money laundering accusation, while Bisciokov risks another maximum sentence of 20 years for plot to violate American sanctions, and another maximum of five years for the conspiracy to exploit a transmission company without license.

It is not known if the two were arrested. Shannon Shevlin, spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice, told Techcrunch that the Doj did not know if Mira Serda had been arrested in the water.

The two administrators responsible for Garatex could not be joined by Techcrunch to comment.

American prosecutors allegedly alleged that Bisciokov and Mira Serda knew that their crypto exchange had been used for money laundering and actively worked to happen even when the Russian authorities asked questions. According to the DoJ, when the Russian police have asked for files at some point linked to a MIRA Serda account on Guarantx, the company provided incomplete information and “said the account was not verified”.

“In reality, Gassius had associated the account with Mira Serda’s personal identification documents,” according to the indictment.

Millions of crypto seized, confirms the doj

Guarantx has been at the center of Western government action for several years.

In 2022, as part of a series of actions against Russian cybercrime, The US Treasury has sanctioned Guarantexmentioning an analysis which has shown that “more than $ 100 million in transactions are associated with illicit players and the Darknet markets, including nearly $ 6 million in Russian [Ransomware as a Service] Gang Conti and also including around 2.6 million dollars [darknet market] Hydra.”

In addition, in 2024, as part of a series of sanctions against Russia for having invaded Ukraine, The European Union has sanctioned Garantexalleging that the exchange is “closely associated with Russian banks sanctioned by the EU”.

According to the DoJ, despite the sanctions imposed by the American government, Bisciokov and its co-conspirators violated the law of sanctions by continuing to accept transactions with American entities, and “redrawn the operations of Garantinex to escape and violate American sanctions and induce American companies to transfer involuntarily with the violence of the sanctions”.

“For example, Gassortex has moved its operational cryptocurrency portfolios to various virtual currency addresses daily in order to make it difficult for cryptocurrency exchanges based on the United States to identify and block transactions with the GuaRotex accounts,” read the MJ’s announcement.

The DOJ also said that US police have frozen more than $ 26 million in funds used to facilitate the money laundering of Garantors. DoJ spokesperson Shevlin told Techcrunch that the department froze a total of 23,034,884.75 ties and 35.57 Bitcoin on Binance (worth around $ 3 million on Friday), or about $ 26.2 million.

Even before these measures to apply the law, Gassius announced on Thursday that it had suspended “all services, including withdrawals from cryptocurrency”, after Stabbing transmitter Belonging to Guarantsex, which held more than $ 28 million.

“We have bad news. Tether entered the war against the Russian Cryptography Market, ”Guarantex wrote on his official telegram channel in a announcement. “We are fighting and will not give up!” Please note that everything [Tether] In Russian portfolios, is currently threatened. As always, we are the first, but not the last. »»

After the announcement of the DoJ on Friday, Guarantx Published an alert on Telegram On the crooks “pretending to be the restored guarantee exchange or to offer to withdraw funds”.

“These are all crooks!” Their objective is to access the personal data of users, portfolio addresses and other sensitive information, “according to an ad in Russian reading, according to a machine translation.

The announcement made no mention of the withdrawal of the website, nor the charges of Bescikov and Mira Serda.