Reports from two independent news sources reveal the arrest of Aleksej Besciokov, an operator of the sanctioned Russian cryptocurrency exchange, Garantex, in India, on Tuesday. Besciokov, a 46-year-old Lithuanian national and resident of Russia, was reportedly taken into custody by the law enforcement authorities in the Indian state of Kerala while on vacation along the nation’s southern coastline with his family, as per reports by Techcrunch and KrebsonSecurity.
Just last week, Garantex’s domains and servers were seized, and nearly $28 million worth of crypto linked to the exchange was frozen by an international alliance of law enforcement agencies from the U.S., Germany, and Finland, with the assistance of stablecoin issuer Tether.
In 2022, the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) sanctioned the exchange for its alleged deliberate involvement in money laundering activities for ransomware actors, such as Conti and Black Basta, and major darknet markets like Hydra, which was the world’s most significant of its kind until its shutdown in 2022.
Garantex has also been implicated in large-scale sanctions evasion, notably with high-end services like the TGR Group, serving Russian oligarchs. The exchange is also accused of aiding criminal activities such as money laundering for North Korea’s Lazarus Group, the mastermind behind the recent colossal $1.5 billion Bybit heist.
Alongside the seizure operation, U.S. prosecutors have charged Besciokov and another operator of Garantex, Aleksandr Mira Serda, a 40-year-old Russian national residing in the United Arab Emirates, with a money laundering conspiracy. Besciokov’s name currently features on the U.S. Secret Service’s Most Wanted list.
Efforts to get comments from the Kerala police and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) regarding Besciokov’s reported arrest yielded no response.
