US charges admins of Garantex for allegedly facilitating crypto money laundering for terrorists and hackers

The U.S. Department of Justice announced on Friday criminal charges against the administrators of the Russian cryptocurrency exchange Garantex for allegedly facilitating money laundering by criminal and terrorist organizations, as well as violating U.S. sanctions. The two administrators are Lithuanian national and Russian resident Aleksej Besciokov, 46, and Aleksandr Mira Serda, 40, a Russian national residing in the United Arab Emirates, who “knew that criminal proceeds were being laundered through Garantex and took steps to conceal the facilitation of illegal activities on its platform,” according to the indictment against them. The DOJ said that Garantex “received hundreds of millions in criminal proceeds and was used to facilitate various crimes, including hacking, ransomware, terrorism, and drug trafficking,” and that the exchange processed at least $96 billion in cryptocurrency transactions since 2019. In the indictment, prosecutors accuse Besciokov of personally allowing tran ... Read full article.