The founder of the Bitzlato cryptocurrency exchange has denied his guilt in a money laundering case in the United States. Anatoly Legkodymov was arrested in Miami in mid-January for his role in running the trading platform that allegedly processed more than $700 million in illicit funds.
Bitzlato founder Legkodymov appears in US court
Anatoly Legkodymov, one of the founders and majority owner of Russia-linked cryptocurrency exchange Bitzlato, made his first appearance in New York federal court on Tuesday, Law360 reported. He was ordered jailed without bail on accusations of laundering millions in criminal proceeds through the platform, which he has denied.
The Russian citizen, a resident of China, was detained by the FBI in Miami on January 17 and charged with transferring money without a license. The defendant was also charged with operating the Hong Kong-registered exchange that failed to implement anti-money laundering safeguards and processed more than $700 million in illicit funds.
The money is allegedly linked to various criminal activities and actors, including ransomware groups and drug dealers. Among them, once the largest darknet marketplace Hydra, also with Russian roots, which shut down in April when its servers were seized in Germany, as well as Russia’s largest crypto pyramid scheme, Finiko.
In late January, four more members of the Bitzlato team, including three executives, were arrested in Europe, while another Bitzlato co-founder, Anton Shkurenko, was briefly detained, questioned and released by Russian authorities in February.
In a previous interview, Shkurenko revealed that Bitzlato plans to move to Russia and relaunch operations from there. Despite the fact that the French police seized the platform’s hot wallet, it also promised to partially restore withdrawals.
In a message posted on its Telegram channel in early March, the exchange announced that it is starting to process withdrawals of client funds. Bitzlato was offline for more than a month after investigators in France shut down his website. According Europolhe has traded over a billion dollars of dirty money.
Do you expect other arrests and charges in the Bitzlato case? Share your thoughts on the subject in the comments section below.
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