US justice department Announced on friday Criminal charges against the administrators of Garcenx for violating American sanctions with alleged money laundering facilities by criminal and terrorist organizations against the administrators of Russian Cryptocurrency.
Both Administrators are Lithuanian national and Russian residents, 46 -year -old, 46 -year -old Alexjjes Beskikov, and 40 -year -old Alexandra Meera Serada, a Russian national living in the United Arab Emirates, who knew that “the criminal income was being looted through the Gventex and steps were being taken to hide the facility of illegal activities,”. Individual Against them.
The DOJ stated that Garantax “received millions of criminal income and was used to facilitate various crimes, including hacking, ransomware, terrorism and drug trafficking,” and that the exchange has processed at least $ 96 billion since 2019.
In the prosecution, the prosecutors accused Beskkikov of individually allowing cyber criminal transactions, in which North Korean-government hackers are known as a Lazarus group.
The prosecution was announced a day after the US Secret Service and a coalition of law enforcement agencies confiscated the official websites of Garantax, replaced their content with a banner of the people’s people and announced the visit to the site.
Our email was returned as unpublished when the three Garantex email addresses listed on their official page before Techcrunch Takedown. Garantex did not respond to several requests for comments through his official Telegram channel.
Both Besciokov and Mira Sera are accused of a money laundering conspiracy, while Besciokov is also accused of violating sanctions and conspiracy and also a conspiracy to operate a business transmitted business. Both face a maximum of 20 -year prison sentence for money laundering charge, while Bascicov faces another maximum punishment of 20 years for conspiracy to violate US sanctions, and one and maximum five years for conspiracy to operate a license money -transmitted business.
It is not clear whether both have been arrested or not. A spokesman of the Department of Justice, Shannon Shevlin, told Techchchan whether DOJ did not know whether Meera Sera has been arrested in UAE or not.
The Garantex administrators could not reach the two charged Garantex administrators for the comment.
US prosecutors alleged that Beskikov and Meera Sera knew that their crypto exchange was used for money laundering and actively worked to happen when the Russian officials asked questions. According to the DOJ, when the Russian law enforcement requested a record at some point related to a Meera Sera account on Garantax, the company provided incomplete information, and “claimed that the account was not verified.”
“In fact, Garandex paired the account with Meera Sera’s personal identity documents,” according to the prosecution.
DOJ confirms millions in crypto
The Garantage has been focusing on the action of the Western government for many years.
In 2022, as part of a series of tasks against Russian cyber crime, American Treasury approves GarantaxReferring to an analysis, showing that “the transaction is associated with more than $ 100 million illegal actors and dark markets, including about $ 6 million (as a service as a service) gang Conty and (Darknet Market) Hydra also included about $ 2.6 million from Russian.”
In addition, in 2024, as part of a range of sanctions against Russia to attack Ukraine, European Union approves guarantexThe allegations alleged that “is closely associated with the Russian banks approved by the European Union.”
According to the DOJ, despite the sanctions imposed by the US government, Beskikov and his co-speculators violated the laws of sanctions by accepting transactions with US-based institutions, and “” to violate American restrictions and violate American restrictions and re-designs the operation of countexes and to create a violation of the US businesses and inspire American businesses to unravel the restrictions. Did.”
“For example, Garantax transferred its operational cryptocurrency wallets to different virtual currency addresses on a daily basis, so that it would be difficult to identify and block transactions with countex accounts for the US-based cryptocurrency exchanges,” Read the DOJ announcement.
The DOJ also said that the US law enforcement was used to facilitate the money laundering of the gentax in funds of over $ 26 million. DOJ spokesperson Shevlin told Techchchan that the department gave a total of 23,034,884.75 tiths and 35.57 bitcoin on benns about $ 26.2 million at the benns (price of about $ 3 million as Friday).
Even before these law enforcement operations, Garantax announced on Thursday that it had “suspended all services, including the Cryptocurrency withdrawal,” after StableCoin Issue Tetter Blocks Wallets Which was exceeding $ 28 million belonging to Garantex.
“We have bad news. Tather has entered the war against the Russian Crypto Bazaar,” Garantax has written in one on its official Telegram channel Announcement“We are fighting and will not give up! Please note that all (Titu) in the Russian wallet are currently in danger. As usual, we are first, but not final.”
After the announcement of Doj on Friday, Garantex Posted alert on telegram About scammers “pretending to be offered to be a Garcentex Exchange or to withdraw money.”
“These are all scammers! Their goal is to get access to users’ personal data, wallet addresses and other sensitive information,” declaration in Russian, according to its machine translation.
The announcement did not mention the website Tekdown, nor the prosecution of Beskikov and Meera Sera.
