UK takes down multibillion-dollar Russian crypto laundering network

The UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) has smashed a multibillion-dollar Russian money laundering scheme which operated in Britain and had ties to the Kremlin.

Investigators said on Wednesday that uncovering the Russian-speaking network, run out of London, Moscow and Dubai, marked the NCAs biggest money laundering case for a decade. The investigation was given the name “Operation Destabilise”.

The NCA and its partners – including the FBI, as well as French and Irish police – arrested 84 people, including 70 in the UK. Five people linked to the illicit network have been put under economic sanctions by the US Treasury.

Investigators said the scheme, run by two Russian financial firms and operating across more than 30 countries, enabled Russian spies and oligarchs, alongside European drug traffickers, to evade sanctions using cryptocurrency.

After being paid in crypto in exchange for their cash, criminal gangs used the virtual currency to buy items like drugs and firearms without the need to move physical money across borders, the NCA said.

Ekaterina Zhdanova, a Russian banker and head of a Moscow-based crypto exchange service called Smart, was named as a key leader in the scheme.

She was previously sanctioned by US authorities last November after allegedly moving more than $100m for Russian elites, something which garnered her widespread media coverage in the country.

The network’s discovery stems from Metropolitan Police officers stopping drugs profits courier Fawad Saiedi in November 2021 and finding £250,000 worth of cash in his car.

Detectives found he had been working for Zhdanova, who is currently in custody in France. Saiedi admitted to helping launder £15.6m of dirty money and was jailed for four years and four months.

TGR, another Russian crypto network, was also named in running the scheme. The company has offices in London, near Oxford Circus, and Dubai, where it took in large amounts of physical cash and charged around three per cent commission for moving it between countries outside of the banking system.

The US office of Foreign Asset Control said it had sanctioned George Rossi, the Russia-born Ukrainian head of TGR, Elena Chirkinyan, a Russian national and his second in command. However, Rossi’s current whereabouts are unknown.

Rob Jones, the NCA’s director general of operations, said: “If you’re somebody now wanting to move money from a drug deal, which has been responsible for real harm in the UK, you’re going to think twice, because you don’t know whether that courier has been compromised.

“You don’t know whether we’re following them, and you don’t know where those proceeds of crime are going to end up.

“We are anticipating where this trade will go next, and we will be ahead and waiting.”

Beneficiaries of the network included the notorious Kinahan cartel, which operates in Ireland and the United Arab Emirates, as well as ransomware groups, the NCA said.

It added that the network was also used to fund “Russian espionage operations” between late 2022 and summer 2023.