Garantex Admins Charged with Crypto Money Laundering | US Justice Department

Garantex Administrators Face Criminal Charges for Facilitating Illicit Financial Activity

The U.S. Department of Justice has announced criminal charges against key personnel managing Garantex, a Russian cryptocurrency exchange. These charges stem from allegations of facilitating money laundering for criminal networks and terrorist organizations, alongside breaches of U.S. sanctions.

Details of the Indictment

Aleksej Besciokov, a 46-year-old Lithuanian national and Russian resident, and Aleksandr Mira Serda, a 40-year-old Russian national currently residing in the United Arab Emirates, are the individuals named in the indictment. Prosecutors assert they were aware of the illegal funds being processed through Garantex and actively concealed their involvement in these illicit activities.

The DOJ alleges Garantex handled hundreds of millions of dollars in criminal proceeds. This included funds linked to a range of illegal operations, such as hacking incidents, ransomware attacks, terrorist financing, and drug trafficking. Since 2019, the exchange reportedly processed at least $96 billion in cryptocurrency transactions.

Allegations Against Besciokov

The indictment specifically accuses Besciokov of knowingly authorizing transactions connected to cybercriminals. Notably, this includes the Lazarus Group, a hacking collective linked to the North Korean government.

Website Seizure and Lack of Response

The announcement of these charges followed a coordinated action by the U.S. Secret Service and other law enforcement agencies. They successfully seized Garantex’s official websites, replacing the original content with a notice of seizure displaying the agencies’ logos.

Attempts by TechCrunch to contact Garantex via listed email addresses proved unsuccessful, with emails being returned as undelivered. Furthermore, the exchange failed to respond to multiple inquiries submitted through its official Telegram channel.

Potential Penalties

Both Besciokov and Mira Serda face charges related to a money laundering conspiracy, carrying a potential maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. Besciokov is additionally charged with conspiracy to violate sanctions and operating an unlicensed money transmitting business, which could add another 20 years and 5 years to his potential sentence, respectively.

Current Status of the Accused

The current whereabouts of the accused are uncertain. A Department of Justice spokesperson, Shannon Shevlin, confirmed to TechCrunch that they have no information regarding the potential arrest of Mira Serda in the UAE.

Efforts to obtain comment from Besciokov and Mira Serda through TechCrunch were unsuccessful.

Deliberate Obstruction of Investigations

U.S. prosecutors contend that Besciokov and Mira Serda were fully aware of the money laundering occurring on their platform and actively facilitated it. This occurred even after receiving inquiries from Russian law enforcement. The DOJ claims that when Russian authorities requested information regarding a Mira Serda account, Garantex provided incomplete data.

The indictment further alleges that Garantex falsely stated the account was not verified, despite having associated it with Mira Serda’s personal identification documents.

Significant Cryptocurrency Holdings Seized, Department of Justice Confirms

Garantex has been under increased scrutiny from governments in the West for a number of years.

In 2022, as part of broader efforts targeting Russian cybercriminal activity, the U.S. Treasury Department placed sanctions on Garantex. This action followed an assessment revealing that transactions exceeding $100 million were linked to illicit actors and darknet marketplaces, including approximately $6 million originating from the Conti Ransomware as a Service group and around $2.6 million from the Hydra darknet market.

Furthermore, in 2024, the European Union imposed sanctions on Garantex as part of a series of measures taken against Russia following the invasion of Ukraine. The EU alleged that the exchange maintains close ties with Russian banks already subject to EU sanctions.

Sanctions Violations and Operational Evasion

According to the Department of Justice, despite the sanctions imposed by the U.S. government, Besciokov and his associates reportedly contravened sanctions regulations by continuing to process transactions involving entities based in the U.S.

They are also accused of restructuring Garantex’s operations to actively circumvent and breach U.S. sanctions, and of incentivizing U.S. businesses to unknowingly engage in transactions with Garantex, thereby violating the sanctions.

The DOJ stated that Garantex frequently altered its cryptocurrency wallet addresses on a daily basis. This was done to complicate efforts by U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchanges to identify and block transactions associated with Garantex accounts.

Funds Frozen and Service Suspension

U.S. law enforcement agencies have frozen over $26 million in assets utilized to facilitate Garantex’s money laundering operations. DOJ representative Shevlin informed TechCrunch that the department had frozen a total of 23,034,884.75 Tether and 35.57 Bitcoin held on Binance, valued at approximately $3 million as of Friday, bringing the total frozen amount to around $26.2 million.

Prior to these enforcement actions, Garantex announced on Thursday that it had halted “all services, including cryptocurrency withdrawals,” after Tether, the stablecoin issuer, blocked wallets associated with Garantex that contained over $28 million.

“We have concerning news. Tether has initiated action against the Russian cryptocurrency market,” Garantex communicated on its official Telegram channel. “We are actively responding and will not concede! Be advised that all Tether holdings in Russian wallets are currently at risk. As has been our pattern, we are the first, but certainly not the last.”

Scam Warnings and Lack of Official Response

Following the DOJ’s announcement on Friday, Garantex issued an alert on Telegram regarding fraudulent actors “posing as the reinstated Garantex exchange or offering fund withdrawal services.”

“These are unequivocally scams! Their objective is to obtain access to users’ personal data, wallet addresses, and other confidential information,” the Russian-language announcement stated, as translated by a machine translation tool.

Notably, the announcement contained no reference to the website being taken down, nor to the indictments of Besciokov and Mira Serda.