A coalition of international law enforcement agencies has seized the website associated with the cryptocurrency exchange Garantex ( “garantex [. ] org” ), nearly three years after the service was sanctioned by the U. S. Treasury Department in April 2022.
” The domain for Garantex has been seized by the United States Secret Service pursuant to a seizure warrant obtained by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia under the authority of 18 U. S. C. § § 981 and 982″, reads a seizure banner on the website.
The operation was carried out in coordination with the U. S. Department of Justice’s Criminal Division, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Europol, the Dutch National Police, the German Federal Criminal Police Office ( Bundeskriminalamt aka BKA ), the Frankfurt General Prosecutor’s Office, the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation, and the Estonian National Criminal Police.
Founded in 2019, Garantex was previously to U. S. sanctions for facilitating deals from blockchain areas and illegal players such as Hydra and Conti. In late 2023, restrictions were also against a Russian national named Ekaterina Zhdanova for her role in laundering the revenues of malware groups like Ryuk via Garantex.
The development comes days after the European Union against the crypto change late last month for its close partnership with already sanctioned Russian banks such as Sberbank, T-Bank, and Alfa-Bank, prompting Wire to prevent its crypto wallets.
In a message posted on its Telegram network, Garantex :” Dear people! We have negative reports. Wire has entered the war against the Soviet crypto industry and blocked our cards worth more than 2.5 billion francs”.
” We are temporarily suspending all companies, including crypto payments, while our whole group solves this problem. We are fighting and will not grant up”!
The Moscow-headquartered change has since explicitly published the list of crypto cards that have been blocked by Tether.