A coalition of worldwide legislation enforcement companies has seized the web site related to the cryptocurrency change Garantex (“garantex[.]org”), almost three years after the service was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Division in April 2022.
“The area for Garantex has been seized by the US Secret Service pursuant to a seizure warrant obtained by the US Lawyer’s Workplace for the Japanese District of Virginia below the authority of 18 U.S.C. §§ 981 and 982,” reads a seizure banner on the web site.
The operation was carried out in coordination with the U.S. Division of Justice’s Felony Division, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Europol, the Dutch Nationwide Police, the German Federal Felony Police Workplace (Bundeskriminalamt aka BKA), the Frankfurt Basic Prosecutor’s Workplace, the Finnish Nationwide Bureau of Investigation, and the Estonian Nationwide Felony Police.
Based in 2019, Garantex was beforehand subject to U.S. sanctions for facilitating transactions from darknet markets and illicit actors resembling Hydra and Conti. In late 2023, sanctions have been additionally imposed towards a Russian nationwide named Ekaterina Zhdanova for her function in laundering the proceeds of ransomware teams like Ryuk through Garantex.
The event comes weeks after the European Union announced similar sanctions towards the crypto change late final month for its shut affiliation with already sanctioned Russian banks resembling Sberbank, T-Financial institution, and Alfa-Financial institution, prompting Tether to dam its crypto wallets.
In a message posted on its Telegram channel, Garantex said: “Pricey customers! We now have dangerous information. Tether has entered the struggle towards the Russian crypto market and blocked our wallets price greater than 2.5 billion rubles.”
“We’re briefly suspending all companies, together with cryptocurrency withdrawals, whereas our whole group solves this downside. We’re combating and won’t surrender!”
The Moscow-headquartered change has since openly published the listing of cryptocurrency wallets which were blocked by Tether.
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