New details in the case of blocking the Russian crypto exchange Garantex.

By Evtuoil | Cryptographic News | 17 Mar 2025

Who exactly blocked the Garantex crypto exchange and why?

Participated in the blocking:

Department of Justice (USA).
The Secret Service (USA).
Law enforcement agencies (Germany).
Law enforcement agencies (Finland).
Tether - is the issuer of the USDT stablecoin.

The first article about the Garantex case

These guys confiscated the exchange's domains, completely blocking its work, but it didn't seem enough to them, and they additionally blocked $26 million in USDT.

Accusations against the platform:

Money laundering.
Assistance to criminal organizations.
Violation of the sanctions regime.

All this happened on March 6th. By sending a request to Tether with a question: Tether did not respond, but forwarded the question to the Secret Service (USA).

On March 7, this service and the Department of Justice (USA) published their press releases with charges.

The Garantex crypto exchange, as it is known, was the leader in ruble liquidity for users from Russia. She supported working with any bank cards.

This means that the USDT stablecoin was the most popular currency among Russians. The trading volumes of "Ruble – USDT" are many times higher than the trading volumes of other cryptocurrency pairs. The platform team admits the threat of USDT tokens located on Russian wallets.

Guarantex has been under sanctions since 2022, and on February 24, 2025, the EU additionally included this platform in a new package of anti-Russian sanctions.

This platform was founded in 2019. Since its foundation, it has processed about $96 billion in cryptocurrency transactions.

On March 6, 2025, three domains of this exchange were seized by a court decision in the Eastern District of Virginia – Garantex.org , Garantex.io . Garantex.academy. These domains can no longer be used to provide services.

As part of the investigation, charges were brought against two exchange administrators.:

Alexey Beschokov. 46 years old. – a Lithuanian citizen residing in Russia.
Alexander Mira Serde. 40 years old. is a Russian citizen residing in the UAE.

They are accused of conspiracy to launder money, and Beschokov is additionally accused of violating US sanctions laws and operating an unregistered payment service.

According to the information, it became known that the defendants knew that they were using the Guarantex to launder criminal proceeds and carefully concealed the traces of these operations.

According to the US Department of Justice, the exchange did not provide Russian law enforcement agencies with full information about the account registered in the name of Mira Serde, but in other similar cases, it transmitted such data to other users.

On this occasion, the Secret Service (USA) had to freeze assets of $ 26 million (2.5 billion rubles) related to this exchange. The authorities claim that these funds were used to launder money on the platform.

The Department of Justice (USA) claims that after the imposition of sanctions against this exchange in 2022, Beschokov and his accomplices continued to operate the exchange despite the bans. Their actions were aimed at redistributing cryptocurrency wallets to conceal transactions and attract American users, which was a violation of the sanctions regime.

Beschokov and Mira Serde are currently facing up to 20 years in prison on charges of money laundering. Beschokov may also receive an additional 20 years for violating sanctions and another 5 years for operating an unregistered payment service.

Additionally, the operation involved:

Europol.
Federal Criminal Police (Germany).
National Bureau of Investigation (USA).
Police (Netherlands).

Additional support was provided by Elliptic, an analytical company.

Naturally, the Garantex team denies the charges against it.

"Such statements are politically biased and turn the stock exchange into a chess piece in the Russia-USA match. The exchange has always actively cooperated with the law enforcement agencies of Russia and other countries," the representatives of the platform said.

The exchange's team states: "Any Garantex sites on any domains can currently be hijacked by fraudsters due to the ambiguous status of officials."

When you go to the old Guarantex exchange website, a domain confiscation stub with the logos of US law enforcement agencies from the European Union is displayed.