Five Russia-Linked Crypto Exchanges Aided Sanctioned Entities After Garantex Seizure

At least five Russia-linked cryptocurrency exchanges continued to provide financial channels for sanctioned entities after the U.S. seizure of Garantex in March 2025, with most platforms not yet sanctioned, Elliptic said on Feb. 22. Only peer-to-peer platform Bitpapa was added to the U.S. Treasury OFAC sanctions list in March 2024, and approximately 9.7% of its outgoing funds flowed to sanctioned entities while it frequently changed wallet addresses to evade monitoring, the firm said. Elliptic reported that unsanctioned ABCeX operates from the Moscow Federal Building, Garantex's former headquarters, and has processed at least $11 billion in cryptocurrency transactions, with sizable flows linked to Garantex and Aifory Pro; Exmo, despite claiming it exited Russia after the 2022 Russia-Ukraine conflict, still shares custodial wallet infrastructure with Russia-based Exmo.me and conducted over $19.5 million in direct transactions with sanctioned entities including Garantex, Grinex and Chatex. The report added that Rapira traded over $72 million directly with sanctioned platform Grinex, and Aifory Pro offered cash-to-crypto services in Moscow, Dubai and Turkey, helping users bypass Western service restrictions via USDT virtual cards; Chainalysis previously reported illicit crypto addresses received $154 billion in 2025, including over $93.3 billion involving the ruble-backed A7A5 stablecoin, while TRM Labs estimated the annual total at approximately $158 billion.