US sanctions against Russian crypto broker Suex due to money laundering from millions in illegal funds-

The US Ministry of Finance, a cryptocurrency broker based in Russia, put on the black list because of its money laundering activities. The platform is suspected to process hundreds of millions of dollars of crypto transactions in connection with fraud, ransomware attacks, darknet markets and the notorious BTC e exchange.

Ofac adds Russian crypto otc excchange suex to the blacklist

The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the US Ministry of Finance has Specialy Designated National and Blocked Persons (SDN) list. The step announced on Tuesday effectively prohibits US citizens in contact with the platform. Ofac also published a list of cryptocurrency addresses linked to Suex.

The company behind the crypto broker, Suex OTC SRO, is a company registered in the Czech Republic. However, it operates mainly from branches in the Russian Federation, including its offices in the capital Moscow and the second largest city in the country, Saint Petersburg. It is believed that Suex is also present elsewhere in Russia, the surrounding region and possibly also in the Middle East.

according to A test report of the blockchain forensics company Chainalysis, which supported the investigation led by the US government ("offers Suex (" " Exchange “) users to convert their cryptocurrency into cash and other assets at its physical locations. These are these services that have attracted ransomware actors, fraudsters and operators of the Darknet market who allegedly sent over $ 160 million in Bitcoin ( btc ) on the out-of-the-counter (OTC) crypto broker.

Since its introduction at the beginning of 2018, Suex has received more than $ 481 million btc Alone at the time of the transfer, and also accepts ether ( eth ) and stop ( usdt ) among other coins. Of these, almost $ 13 million came from ransomware operators such as Ryuk, Conti and Maze. Over 24 million US dollars were sent by crypto fraud, including the

The OTC broker also received more than $ 82 million from "high risk" trading platforms for digital assets. According to the investigation, Suex received cryptocurrencies worth over $ 50 million of addresses that are connected to the BTC-E, which is no longer existing. Although the stock exchange was closed four years ago to enable large-scale money laundering on behalf of cybercriminals, the funds were then probably transferred to the crypto broker by former administrators, employees or users.

one of the alleged operators of BTC-E, the Russian IT specialist Alexander Vinnik, arrested in Greece in summer 2017, was condemned December by a French court to five years in prison for money laundering. Another Russian citizen, Dmitry Vasiliev, who managed the successor platform of BTC-E, WEX, was recently arrested in Poland. At the beginning of this week someone stirred ether with the value of over 30 million US dollar from a wex wallet.