U.S. Ministry of Justice joins Germany and Finland to crack down on crypto exchange Garantex for billions of dollars in crypto money laundering services

PANews reported on March 7 that according to the U.S. Department of Justice announcement, the United States, Germany and Finland jointly operated to close the online infrastructure of the Garantex crypto exchange, which is suspected of laundering money for transnational criminal organizations and terrorist organizations, and violated sanctions, and has handled at least $96 billion in crypto transactions since 2019.

The Ministry of Justice also announced prosecutions against two Garantex managers, including Lithuanian Russian resident Aleksej Besciokov (46) and Russian UAE resident Aleksandr Mira Serda (40) accusing them of co-conspiring to launder money, violating sanctions and operating unlicensed remittances.

Case details:

• Garantex has long provided financial channels for criminal activities such as hackers, ransomware, drug transactions, and has taken measures to cover up illegal transactions.

• In April 2022, the U.S. Treasury Department had imposed sanctions on Garantex, but it continued to trade with U.S. companies and evaded sanctions by changing its crypto wallet address.

• US law enforcement agencies have frozen $26 million of 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 their servers, and US law enforcement agencies obtained copies of Garantex customer and financial databases.

Besciokov and Mira Serda face crimes of money laundering of up to 20 years in prison, and Besciokov faces additional charges of violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and operating unlicensed remittance business, with up to 20 years and 5 years in prison, respectively.

Yesterday, Tether freezes $28 million USDT from Russian sanctioned exchange Garantex .