Reuters: Binance handed over Russian users’ data to Rosfinmonitoring

The head of the cryptocurrency exchange's regional office made no comment on a possible deal with government agencies, the news agency reported

22.04.2022 - 15:45

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What's new? The head of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance for Eastern Europe and Russia, Gleb Kostarev, agreed to provide data of Russian clients to the Federal Financial Monitoring Service of the Russian Federation (Rosfinmonitoring) and the Federal Security Service. This was reported by Reuters, citing knowledgeable sources. According to the sources, Kostarev struck a deal with government agencies and negotiated the creation of a unit in Russia through which authorities can request access to data such as names and addresses to help fight crime. The head of the cryptocurrency exchange's regional office refrained from comment.

The Reuters material

The situation around Binance. On April 21, Binance imposed restrictions on Russian users. It is connected with the observance by the crypto exchange of the fifth package of the European Union sanctions against Russia. Restrictions affected those accounts with an account amount exceeding €10 000. On April 22, Changpeng Zhao, founder, and CEO of the Binance exchange called the new EU restrictions against Russians “a historic aggressive action” and called for peace.

What had happened before? The Federal Taxation Service (FTS) may have obtained data from over 100 000 Russian users of the LocalBitcoins exchange for 2021. According to Andrey Tugarin, managing partner of GMT Legal, the cryptocurrency platform has long been sending information about all of its users to the Finnish tax office, which works closely with Russia. The FTS did not comment on this statement.

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