Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn have accused Iurii Gugnin, the founder of a cryptographic payments with headquarters in the United States, with orchestrating a sophisticated international money laundering operation that allegedly transferred Russed to banks and Entoms.
According to a CNBC report On the matter, the 38 -year -old Russian citizen, who lives in Manhattan, was arrested and arrested on Monday, where he was ordered to be a bail without bail pending.
‘A Undercover Pipe for Dirty Money’
Gugnin faces an accusation of 22 positions that includes positions of bank and bank fraud, violations of American sanctions, money laundering and not implementing mandatory protocols against money laundering. Deputy Attorney General Eisenberg declared:
The defendant is responsible for converting a cryptocurrency company into a undercover pipe for dirty money, moving approximately half a billion dollars through the United States financial system to help sanctioned Russian banks and help Russian end users to acquire users.
According to prosecutors, Guggnin used their companies (Evita investments and Evita payments to process significant payments while obscuring the origins and purposes of the funds. Between June 2023 and January 2025, it allegedly channeled money through several American banks and cryptocurrency exchanges, mainly using the USDT Stablecoin of Tether.
The accusation reveals that Gognin clients included individuals and companies associated with sanctioned Russian institutions such as Sberbank, VTB Bank, Sovcombank, Tinkoff and the state nuclear energy firm, Rosatom.
The Crypto executive faces up to 30 years in prison
To execute this scheme, Guggnin supposedly misrepresented the nature of his business, falsified compliance documents and deceived the banks and platforms of digital assets with respect to their connections with Russia.
Prosecutors claim that he hid the source of funds through shell accounts and altered around 80 invoices, digitally eliminating the identities of Russian counterparts.
The researchers also discovered Internet searches that indicate that Gugnin was aware of the scrutiny they faced, including consultations such as “how to know if there is an investigation against them” and “money laundering sanctions in the United States”
Notable, the Department of Justice has stressed that Ggnin maintained direct connections with members of the intelligence services of Russia and Iran officials, nations that do not extradate people to the United States. It is also a battery or facilitates the export of American technology sensitive to Russian customers, including controlled anti -terrorism servers.
If it is convicted only for bank fraud charges, the cryptography executive faces a maximum legal sentence of 30 years in prison. However, if they will declare it guilty of all charges, it could face a consecutive prayer that could extnd beyond their life, underlining the seriousness of the charges against them.