The US Treasury Department has expanded its sanctions list to include 11 companies and two individuals associated with cryptocurrency trading. It was published on the official website of the Ministry of Finance on Monday, March 25. “Russia is increasingly turning to alternative payment mechanisms to circumvent United States sanctions and continue to finance the war against Ukraine,” the ministry’s press service quotes Brian Nelson, the US Treasury Under Secretary for Counterterrorism and Financial Intelligence.
Nelson assures that the US Treasury will continue to “expose and destroy companies that seek to help sanctioned Russian financial institutions rejoin the global financial system.” Previously, journalistic investigations indicated that with the help of cryptocurrencies, Russia is circumventing the international sanctions imposed on it.
US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller also said that the measures taken “confirm the G7’s commitment to limiting Russia’s use of the international financial system to continue its war against Ukraine” and reflect Washington’s ongoing efforts to curb the activities of companies serving “Russia’s core financial infrastructure.”
Who’s on the new sanctions list?
The sanctions list includes the Russian service B-crypto, which deals with payments through cryptocurrencies for services of foreign suppliers in Russian rubles, blockchain platforms Masterchain, Atomyze and Web3 Tech, cryptocurrency exchangers Netexchange, Bitfingroup and Bitpapa, the Awex exchange, the companies Lighthouse, Tokentrust ” and TOEP. Among the individuals on the list are the creator of Web3 Tech, Igor Kaygorodov, and the creator of Netexchange and Bitfingroup, Timur Bukanov.
Of the companies not related to cryptocurrencies, sanctions were imposed on the Eshelon group of companies and the Cyber Security Laboratory belonging to it. They work in the information security market, developing software to protect against and carry out hacker attacks. In addition, this company trains hackers in special training centers, Radio Liberty notes.
Atomyze is a platform for the creation and circulation of digital financial assets (DFA), indicates the Interfax agency, among whose investors is the Interros company of Deputy Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation Vladimir Potanin. The Russian national remote electronic voting system, the blockchain platform of the Federal Tax Service and the fintech services of the sanctioned Alfa Bank operate on the Web3 Tech platform.
On March 11, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law that allows the use of DFAs in international payments.
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2024-03-26 07:00:36