US DOJ With a Bounty Totaling Up to $6M For Defunct Exchange Garantex Leaders

United States authorities have unveiled an enormous reward for any info offered relating to the administration members of the Garantex crypto change.

After working for years and facilitating billions of transactions involving cybercriminals, the now rebranded entity is beneath heavy hearth.

Substantial Reward

The Workplace of the Spokesperson for the US Division of State issued an announcement yesterday, asserting that it’s focusing on the now-obsolete Russian cryptocurrency change Garantex, which was allegedly utilized by a wide range of criminals finishing up cybercrime and cash laundering inside its community.

The division’s Transnational Organized Crime Rewards Program (TOCRP) has ready two rewards, totaling as much as $6 million, for any info that results in the arrest or conviction of Garantex executives. That is cut up between as much as $5M for Russian nationwide Aleksandr Mira Serda, co-owner and CCO, and as much as $1 million for different key leaders of the change.

OFAC, the Treasury’s Workplace of Overseas Property Management, is taking steps to redesignate Garantex and designate its successor, Grinex, which stays operational. This adopted Tether’s interference, which concerned blocking wallets related to the change and seizing USDT belongings earlier this 12 months.

German and Finnish authorities additionally aided by seizing their area and freezing over $26 million in digital belongings managed by Garantex. OFAC may also be naming three executives from the change and 6 affiliated firms in Russia and the Kyrgyz Republic.

As per stories from the FBI and U.S. Secret Service, between April 2019 and March 2025, the change processed at the least $96 billion in crypto transactions. It additionally obtained a whole lot of hundreds of thousands in proceeds from the criminals utilizing it to hold out a variety of crimes, together with terrorism, drug trafficking, ransoms, and others, oftentimes, inflicting important hurt to victims from america.

Recognized Information

Garantex was based on the finish of 2019 and registered in Estonia. Most of its operations had been carried out from Moscow and St. Petersburg. In February 2022, it misplaced its license for offering digital asset companies after Estonia’s Monetary Intelligence Unit (EFIU) unveiled critical deficiencies in its legal guidelines towards cash laundering and terrorist financing, as wallets linked to prison exercise had been found.

After the EFIU enforcement and OFAC’s designation, the change created an infrastructure designed to forestall establishments from accrediting pockets addresses again to them, in an try to evade sanctions. This allowed them to proceed offering companies to varied entities concerned in prison actions.

A identified cash launderer, Ekaterina Zhdanova, has reportedly funneled over $2 million in Bitcoin to the USDT stablecoin utilizing the change. She is presently being pursued beneath an govt order from November 2023 for conducting monetary operations or companies on the earth’s largest nation.

In March 2025, the US DOJ unsealed indictments towards the CCO and Aleksej Besciokov, a identified govt. Following this, the latter was arrested in India, whereas the previous stays at massive.