Russia’s court will consider the first case in the country on the appropriation of crypto exchange funds

The damage to the WEX platform is 3 billion RUB

17.04.2023 - 15:30

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2 min

What’s new? The Zayeltsovsky District Court of Novosibirsk will consider the first criminal case in Russia on the appropriation of assets of a cryptocurrency exchange. The defendant in the case is a former system administrator of the WEX platform, a preliminary investigation into the embezzlement of the property of World Exchange Services Pte. Ltd. on a particularly large scale was completed by the Interior Ministry on April 13. The document, which went to court, states that the amount of damage exceeds 3 billion Russian rubles (RUB) in cryptocurrencies, Prime reports.

Prime’s material

Details of the case. The defendant Alexey Sergeevich Ivanov (formerly Alexey Viktorovich Bilyuchenko) was charged under Article 160 Part 4 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. According to the Ministry of the Interior, in October 2018, Ivanov blocked access to the combined current accounts and crypto wallet addresses controlled by the legal entity, eliminating access of users and owners of the exchange to assets.

To compensate for the damage to the legal entity and to secure the claims of users, investigators seized Ivanov’s real estate, as well as his voluntary contributions of more than 4,3 billion RUB.

The court specified that a pre-trial cooperation agreement was concluded with Ivanov, which he fully complied with. In particular, the defendant reimbursed the damage, providing data on his bank accounts, to which he transferred more than 3 billion RUB. The court will consider the case in a special order, which reduces the upper limit of the maximum possible penalty by one-third.

On November 23, 2022, 10 000 BTC were transferred from the WEX wallet, and the HitBTC crypto exchange received part of those funds (65 coins).

Last May, the St. Petersburg court in an extortion case for the first time recognized cryptocurrency as a means of payment

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