Garantex, a cryptocurrency exchange allegedly co-founded by Aleksej Bešciokov, was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury in April 2022 for willfully facilitating money laundering for ransomware groups, as well as darknet markets like Hydra disregarding AML/CFT obligations

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12:00am, Friday, April 1, 2022

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The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control added Garantex to its list of sanctioned entities in April 2022 for “willfully disregard[ing] Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) obligations and allow[ing] their systems to be abused by illicit actors.” The European Union also imposed sanctions against the platform in February as part of sanctions on “Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.”

The exchange was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) in 2022, for knowingly facilitating money laundering for ransomware actors, including Conti and Black Basta, and darknet markets like Hydra, the largest such market in the world before its closure in 2022.