The U.S. Department of Justice announced a coordinated action with Germany and Finland to disrupt Garantex, a cryptocurrency exchange alleged to have facilitated money laundering by transnational criminal groups and sanctions violations, and unsealed an Eastern District of Virginia indictment against two alleged administrators. Prosecutors allege Garantex processed at least USD 96 billion in cryptocurrency transactions since April 2019 and handled hundreds of millions in criminal proceeds linked to hacking, ransomware, terrorism and drug trafficking. The indictment charges Aleksej Besciokov and Aleksandr Mira Serda with conspiracy to commit money laundering, with Besciokov also charged with conspiracy to violate sanctions under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business. Court filings allege that after the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned Garantex on April 5, 2022, the operators continued transacting with U.S.-based entities and altered operations to evade sanctions compliance controls, including moving operational cryptocurrency wallets to new addresses daily; Garantex also allegedly failed to register with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. As part of the disruption, U.S. law enforcement executed a court-authorized seizure of the Garantex.org, Garantex.io and Garantex.academy domains on March 6, German and Finnish authorities seized servers hosting the exchange’s operations, U.S. authorities obtained earlier server copies including customer and accounting databases, and more than USD 26 million was frozen.

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