The owner of the Bitzlato crypto exchange, Russian Anatoly Legkodimov, was detained in the USA

Bitzlato is accused of laundering hundreds of millions of dollars, reports golosameriki.com.

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On Wednesday, the Ministry of Finance reported that the cryptocurrency exchange Bitzlato is connected to money laundering and illegal financing in Russia.

FinCEN, the financial intelligence unit of the US Department of Finance, has banned all financial institutions from making transfers and financial operations from this crypto exchange.

The US authorities also announced that the majority shareholder and co-founder of the crypto exchange Bitzlato, registered in Hong Kong, was arrested in Miami on Tuesday. He turned out to be a Russian citizen, Anatoly Legkodymov, who lives permanently in China.

Legkodymov is accused of laundering hundreds of millions of dollars of "dirty" money, including Russian money.

According to the statement of the Ministry of Justice, Legkodymov managed the crypto exchange as a "high-tech financial center, which, in his own words, served "known fraudsters".

According to the US Attorney's Office, since May 3, 2018, Bitzlato has processed crypto currency transactions worth $4,58 billion.

By noon on Wednesday, the Bitzlato website was replaced with a notification that he had been arrested by French authorities "as part of a coordinated action by international law enforcement agencies."

Deputy Finance Minister Walla Adeyemo said at a press conference at the Ministry of Justice that the measures against Bitzlato "expose and suppress the activities of Russian cybercriminals and their accomplices."

The Ministry of Finance emphasizes that measures similar to those taken against Bitzlato have been taken only a few times in history, when it came to "the most flagrant cases of money laundering" and that this is "the first step of its kind in the fight against Russian illegal financing". within the framework of the new powers of the Ministry of Finance.

Adeyemo told reporters that the crypto exchange Bitzlato conducted transactions of groups using ransomware linked to Russia. The Ransomware-as-a-Service group was named as an example.

Two-thirds of Bitzlato's main recipients and senders are linked to the Russian darknet market or fraud.

Almost 50 percent of all known Bitzlato transactions during this time were related to illegal financing from Russia or other dangerous sources.

Law enforcement officials believe that Bitzlato's illegal activity accounts for almost half a billion dollars in transfers between 2019 and 2021.

The document of the Ministry of Finance notes that "the Bitzlato crypto exchange is ultimately part of a larger ecosystem of cybercriminals who are allowed to operate with impunity in Russia.

Russia is a haven for cybercriminals, where the government often recruits them for its malicious purposes. The majority of ransomware incidents reported by FinCEN in the second half of 2021 were related to various variants of Russian-linked ransomware.”

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