HƯỚNG DẪN MUA BÁN BITCOIN TRÊN WEX
BTC-e was a shadowy crypto-currency brokerage serving hundreds ofthousands of customers. Mayzus Financial Services was an apparently reputablepayments provider with a London address và a licence from the FinancialConduct Authority. Through a website of offshore entities, anonymous UK shellcompanies & secret bank accounts, their combined services could be exploitedkhổng lồ create a high-tech money-laundering machine, right under regulators’ noses.
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“Doyou know Mr Alexander Vinnik?”
Givingevidence to lớn the Greek supreme court in December 2017, Sergey Mayzus was facedwith an obvious question.
Vinnikwas a 38-year-old Russian. Four months earlier, while on holiday with hisfamily in the tourist village of Ouranoupoli, he had been arrested by plainclothes officers & charged withrunning a massive sầu international money-laundering scheme.
TheUnited States accused Vinnik of operating BTC-e, one of the most popularwebsites for buying và selling the crypto-currency Bitcoin. Lacking “basicanti-money laundering controls and policies”, the indictment alleged, “BTC-e emerged as one of the principal meansby which cyber criminals around the world laundered the proceeds of theirillicit activity.” Now they wanted to extradite Vinnik to lớn America to standtrial.
BTC-e emerged as one of the principal means by which cyber criminals around the world laundered the proceeds of their illicit activity.- US Department of Justice
Thisplaced Mayzus in an awkward position. His UK company, Mayzus Financial Services (MFS), had opened at least sevenaccounts on its platsize for BTC-e’s shell companies và staff, including onefor Vinnik himself, và handled around $100 million in transactions. MFSsubsidiaries provided instructions on how to use BTC-e on their own websites,while senior employees maintained personal accounts on the site. MFS evenresponded lớn press enquiries on BTC-e’s behalf. Had Mayzus ever met Vinnik?
“I’mseeing hyên ổn today for the first time in my life.”
Thejudge was nonplussed. “So why did you tell the court that you would giveevidence about a man you don’t know?”
BTC-elaunched in June 2011. It got off khổng lồ a slow start—a leaked snapshot of thesite’s user database, seen by Global Witness, shows that just 20,000 people hadjoined by the over of 2012. But when the market-leading Bitcoin exchange, Mt.Gox, ran inkhổng lồ financial và legal trouble the following year, BTC-e surged. ByOctober năm trước, when the snapshot was taken, BTC-e had almost 570,000 users. Morethan a fifth of them had their language set to Russian.
BTC-e’susers handled serious amounts of money. In October 2014 they held a total of79,114 Bitcoins, worth more than $30 million at the time & around $680million at November 2019 exchange rates. Users held another $30 milliondenominated in US dollars and more than $trăng tròn million in the alternativecrypto-currencies Litecoin and Namecoin. At its height in the autumn of 2016,BTC-e handled around 15% of all trade between US dollars and Bitcoin,making it the third biggest exchange in the market. Prior lớn Vinnik’s arrest itwas mentioned in reports in the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New Yorker, TIME and a galaxy of speciadanh sách publications.
Muchlượt thích conventional currency speculators, many BTC-e users were out khổng lồ make aprofit by buying low và selling high. But as the indictment makes clear,explaining the exchange’s “criminal design”, BTC-e’s no-questions-askedconversion between crypto-currencies và cash also attracted criminals.Accounts on BTC-e were practically anonymous: “a user could create a BTC-eaccount with nothing more than a username và email address, which often boreno relationship lớn the identity of the actual user.” This created theopportunity khổng lồ convert the proceeds of cyber-crime, obtained as Bitcoin, intoseemingly legitimate bank balances. A 2013 report for Wired referredto BTC-e specifically as an “offshore exchange … that
Hackersused accounts on BTC-e to launder hundreds of thousands of Bitcoins stolen fromthe Mt. Gox exchange, contributing lớn its eventual collapse. The site alsoproved useful khổng lồ real-world criminals. Analysis by Global Witness has linkedemail addresses used to register accounts on BTC-e to lớn users advertisingprescription drugs, cannabis & bootleg cigarettes on popular dark netmarkets—online bazaars accessible through a special browser which protectsusers’ anonymity. The exchange even facilitated corruption among mỏi those taskedwith investigating cyber-crime: in 2015, US Secret Service agent Shaun Bridges used a BTC-e account to embezzle more than1,606 Bitcoins (November 2019: around $14 million) seized under the authority ofthe US government.
Exchanges lượt thích BTC-e, where Bitcoin meets cash, present money-laundering risks. Photo credit: QuoteInspector.com / Flickr
Perhapsmost troubling for US prosecutors is a liên kết khổng lồ the Russian state-sponsoredhacking group known as Fancy Bear, which interfered in the năm 2016 presidentialelection. In order lớn carry out “phishing” attacks on key targets, Fancy Bearsent emails from spoof web addresses paid for with Bitcoin. Analysis of the Bitcoin blockchain—a record of allprevious transactions—suggests that one of these addresses, mimicking theWorld Anti-Doping Agency, was paid for with funds originating from an accounton BTC-e.
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Tohide their identities while lending a veneer of respectability lớn theenterprise, BTC-e’s operators used a tried và tested tool: an anonymous UKcompany. Always Efficient LLP was registered as alimited liability partnership in July năm trước by two nominees based in theSeychelles. The introduction of the persons with significant control (PSC)register in the UK in năm nhâm thìn should have sầu forced Always Efficient’s real ownershad khổng lồ show their faces, and on 9 July Alexander Buyanov was registered as thecompany’s PSC. But when a Russian journamenu tracked Buyanov down khổng lồ a Moscow karaokebar where he worked as a DJ, Buyanov claimed he had never heard of the company.
AlwaysEfficient wasn’t the only shell company behind BTC-e. According to lớn the USindictment, the exchange’s main legal entity was Canton Business Corporation,registered in the Seychelles, while a lawsuit filed in Cyprus by Sergey Mayzusnames fourteen other companies, all registered in Britain, its overseasterritories or former colonies. Those registered in the UK itself raise themost obvious red flags. Chartwood Technology LLP. was constituted as aLondon-registered partnership of two Dominican companies which have been linked to lớn large-scale money-laundering scandals. Gem Invest LP, registered inEdinburgh, was formed by the same overseas partners as a company allegedly linked to former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko.
In documents filed with the court Mayzus claimed Vinnik had “maintainedan unauthorized money transfer business” without MFS’s knowledge, demanding€200 million in compensation from Vinnik và the listed shell companies for thefraud and resulting damage lớn MFS’s reputation. But in a 2017 interview with radio stationKommersant FM, Vinnik’s lawyer, Timofey Musatov, alleged that Mayzus himselfcontrolled BTC-e’s main shell companies, not the other way around.
In a statementprovided lớn Global Witness, Mayzus strongly denied any links khổng lồ BTC-e’scorporate structures and accused Musatov himself of having a personal financialinterest in the case. Musatov declined khổng lồ provide a formal phản hồi, butcharacterised Mayzus’s claims as an attempt to lớn distract from the fundamentalsof the case. In a press statement given in October, Vinnik reiterated the claimthat Mayzus benefited financially from the collapse of BTC-e.
Under control?
The UK’s persons with significant control register was introduced in June năm nhâm thìn. It requires companies to lớn provide an up-to-date record of their beneficial owners and is accessible through the Companies House website.
While the register is useful in principle, analysis by Global Witness earlier this year found that it remains incomplete and filled with inaccuracies. More than 330,000 companies declare that they have no beneficial owner, 487 are part of circular ownership structures và several are apparently controlled by children under the age of two.
Global Witness recommends that companies be required to submit identification & proof of control when reporting PSCs và that the government gives Companies House sufficient resources proactively khổng lồ kiểm tra the register for red flags.
