US and UK probing $20 billion in crypto transactions on Russian exchange: Report
Today’s major cryptocurrency news is the 25-year prison sentence handed to Sam Bankman-Fried, the former CEO of bankrupt crypto exchange FTX.
However, while the crypto community and the global market react to the sentencing, there’s another headline news report echoing across the market.
UK, US probe Garantex-linked USDT transactions
On Thursday, March 28, a report by Bloomberg noted that authorities in the US and the UK are currently investigating the transfer of billions of dollars in crypto via a Russia-based cryptocurrency exchange.
In particular, the report says $20 billion in transactions found their way through the crypto exchange Garantex. These transactions were in the stablecoin Tether (USDT), the report stated.
Garantex is one of the entities hit with sanctions in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) added Garantex to the list of sanctioned entities in April 2022.
In December last year, reports emerged that a new Russian firm dubbed Exved had launched a trading desk supporting the exchange of USDT, rubles and the US dollar.
Exved was reportedly a venture co-founded by Sergey Mendeleev. Mendelev and Stanislav Drugalev are co-founders of Garantex.
Tether, the issuer of USDT, has over the past several months acknowledged its cooperation with authorities in efforts to combat financial fraud and other illicit activities.
The company has previously frozen millions of dollars’ worth of USDT linked to fraud and other schemes.
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