US charges Garantex admins with money laundering, sanctions violations

The administrators of the Russian Garantex crypto-exchange have been charged in the United States with facilitating money laundering for criminal organizations and violating sanctions.

46-year-old Lithuanian national and Russian resident Aleksej Besciokov and 40-year-old Russian national and United Arab Emirates resident Aleksandr Mira Serda—who controlled Garantex between 2019 and 2025—are charged with money laundering conspiracy which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.

Besciokov was also charged with conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business (maximum penalty of five years in prison) and violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (maximum penalty of 20 years).

“Since April 2019, Garantex has processed at least $96 billion in cryptocurrency transactions,” the DOJ said today.

Mira Serda served as Garantex’s co-founder and chief commercial officer, while Besciokov was Garantex’s technical administrator, responsible for securing and sustaining critical Garantex infrastructure and reviewing and approving transactions.

U.S. DOJ says both defendants were aware that Garantex was used to launder hundreds of millions in criminal proceeds and facilitate various crimes, including hacking, ransomware, drug trafficking, and terrorism. They also took steps to hide the crypto-exchange’s involvement in facilitating illegal activities.

Garantex domains and servers seized

The U.S. Justice Department seized Garantex’s domains (Garantex[.]org, Garantex[.]io, and Garantex[.]academy) and servers hosting its operations this week in a joint operation with law enforcement authorities from Germany and Finland.

U.S. authorities have also obtained earlier copies of the servers, including accounting and customer databases, and have frozen over $26 million in funds used to facilitate money laundering activities.

​Garantex was also forced to suspend services on Thursday because Tether blocked its digital wallets following European Union sanctions targeting the crypto-exchange as part of its 16th package of sanctions against Russia, which designated 542 individuals and entities.

“We have bad news. Tether entered the war against the Russian cryptographic market and blocked our wallets in the amount of more than 2.5 billion rubles,” the Garantex team said in a Thursday Telegram post.

“We temporarily suspend the provision of all services, including the findings of cryptocurrency, for a while, while the whole team is solving this problem. We’re fighting and we’re not giving up! We draw your attention to the fact that all USDT on Russian wallets is now at risk.”

​The Russian exchange was previously sanctioned by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) in April 2022 after over $100 million in Garantex transactions were linked to darknet markets and cybercrime actors, including the notorious Conti Ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) operation and the Hydra dark web market.

Garantex lost its license to provide virtual currency services in February 2022 after Estonia’s Financial Intelligence Unit found critical compliance issues with Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) policies and linked Garantex with wallets used for criminal activity.

“Despite losing its Estonian license to provide virtual currency services following the Estonian Financial Intelligence Unit’s investigation, Garantex continues to provide services to customers through unscrupulous means,” OFAC said at the time.