The US Department of Justice has accused the alleged co-owner of the BTC-e cryptocurrency exchange, a citizen of Belarus and Cyprus, Alexander Klimenko, of conspiring to launder money and conduct illegal financial business.
According to investigators, from 2011 to July 2017, Klimenko controlled the BTC-e exchange together with Alexander Vinnik and other accomplices. He also allegedly owned the technology company Soft-FX and the forex broker FXOpen. The Belarusian media also wrote about Klimenko's connection with the latter two.
The prosecution claims that the BTC-e servers were leased and serviced by Soft-FX and Klimenko in particular. The BTC-e exchange operated without a license, did not have AML / KYC procedures, and therefore was used for various illegal activities, the Ministry of Justice stressed.
42-year-old Klimenko was detained in Latvia on December 21, 2023 at the request of the American authorities. Recently, he was extradited to the United States and arrested.
He faces up to 25 years in prison.
Earlier, the owner of the British firm Mayzus Financial Services (MFS), Sergey Mayzus, spoke about the role of Klimenko and his companies in the alleged scheme of money laundering through the BTC-e exchange.:
"Vinnik used MFS to accept payments from net BTC-e customers to the account of an affiliated company called Always Efficient. From there, he made payments to customers, and forwarded the daily balance to the Canton Business Corporation account in MoneyPolo. In the future, this money was withdrawn to the account of XP Solutions in Alfa-Bank in Moscow, and then to the account of FXOpen."
According to Maizus, another company associated with Vinnik, Gem Invest, was used to accept payments to the xBTCe cryptocurrency exchange, which belonged to Klimenko. Denis Peganov is the head of xBTCe, as well as the Director of FXOpen and XP Solutions.
Some of the former partners and clients of BTC-e have already begun to gloat over the future fate of Klimenko and Vinnik.
"I'm gloating, I'm just happy. I don't understand why it took so long to get to Klimenko, seven years,"writes Sergey Maizus, the owner of payment companies that served BTC — e," apparently, Vinnik began to give evidence."
Now Russia continues its own investigation of the BTC-e case. In September, another exchange administrator, Alexey Bilyuchenko, received a rather lenient term of 4.5 years in a general regime penal colony and a fine of 1 million rubles. For, according to the verdict, embezzlement of funds of the Wex crypto exchange, the heiress of BTC-e. Observers of the trial suggested that the leniency of the sentence is compensated by the obligation to hand over all the remaining multibillion-dollar assets to persons close to the state.
According to investigators, from 2011 to July 2017, Klimenko controlled the BTC-e exchange together with Alexander Vinnik and other accomplices. He also allegedly owned the technology company Soft-FX and the forex broker FXOpen. The Belarusian media also wrote about Klimenko's connection with the latter two.
The prosecution claims that the BTC-e servers were leased and serviced by Soft-FX and Klimenko in particular. The BTC-e exchange operated without a license, did not have AML / KYC procedures, and therefore was used for various illegal activities, the Ministry of Justice stressed.
42-year-old Klimenko was detained in Latvia on December 21, 2023 at the request of the American authorities. Recently, he was extradited to the United States and arrested.
He faces up to 25 years in prison.
Earlier, the owner of the British firm Mayzus Financial Services (MFS), Sergey Mayzus, spoke about the role of Klimenko and his companies in the alleged scheme of money laundering through the BTC-e exchange.:
"Vinnik used MFS to accept payments from net BTC-e customers to the account of an affiliated company called Always Efficient. From there, he made payments to customers, and forwarded the daily balance to the Canton Business Corporation account in MoneyPolo. In the future, this money was withdrawn to the account of XP Solutions in Alfa-Bank in Moscow, and then to the account of FXOpen."
According to Maizus, another company associated with Vinnik, Gem Invest, was used to accept payments to the xBTCe cryptocurrency exchange, which belonged to Klimenko. Denis Peganov is the head of xBTCe, as well as the Director of FXOpen and XP Solutions.
Some of the former partners and clients of BTC-e have already begun to gloat over the future fate of Klimenko and Vinnik.
"I'm gloating, I'm just happy. I don't understand why it took so long to get to Klimenko, seven years,"writes Sergey Maizus, the owner of payment companies that served BTC — e," apparently, Vinnik began to give evidence."
Now Russia continues its own investigation of the BTC-e case. In September, another exchange administrator, Alexey Bilyuchenko, received a rather lenient term of 4.5 years in a general regime penal colony and a fine of 1 million rubles. For, according to the verdict, embezzlement of funds of the Wex crypto exchange, the heiress of BTC-e. Observers of the trial suggested that the leniency of the sentence is compensated by the obligation to hand over all the remaining multibillion-dollar assets to persons close to the state.
