Putin’s Government Partnering with Anti-Drug Regulators to Track Crypto Transactions

The Bank of Russia, along with Russia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs, will be partnering with Stopnarkotik to track crypto transactions. In case you didn’t know, Stopnarkotik is an all-Russian public movement with an anti-drug agenda. The collaboration is meant to determine different financial transactions that involve cryptocurrencies.

However, the focus of this partnership lies in transactions related to drug sales. Lenta.ru, a popular online news portal in the country, reported on the agreement between the organizations. In their report, they quoted from a letter by a renowned MVD official.

The letter was issued by the head of the drug control department of Russia’s interior ministry, Major General Andrei Yanishevsky. He signed the letter after holding a meeting with the anti-drug organization’s representatives.

The letter was issued as a response after the organization, Stopnarkotik, asked the two agencies to investigate Susex. Susex, if you didn’t know, is an OTC crypto broker based in Russia offering services to local crypto investors. Their local-oriented regulations and news make it simpler for interested traders to make investment decisions based on what’s happening in the country. According to the approach from the organization, Susex has links to various banks and companies. However, not all of it is good.

In September, the US treasury department blacklisted Susex, which operates from physical offices in Saint Petersburg and Moscow. Regulators suspect that the OTC crypto platform has been assisting illegitimate business with their scams. They think that Susex has already processed millions of dollars in coin transactions as a result of scams. Besides scams, it has been instrumental in promoting darknet markets and ransomware attacks on organization data.

Ever since the OTC crypto broker, Susex, launched three years ago in 2018, it has managed to receive countless funds. It has made almost $481 million because of its unique niches. But a large chunk of the money came from activities like ransomware operators like Maze, Conti, and Ryuk.

And the claims against Susex seem to keep rising, as it turns out that it was responsible for laundering close to $1.5 billion worth of money for drug producers and sellers.

However, there does seem to be hope for cryptocurrencies as a whole in Russia, as the government starts taking a more proactive approach to tracking cryptocurrencies. Since crypto has unfortunately been linked to money laundering and drug related activities, they are going to have to better monitor it.

Regulation does come with its fair share of benefits, even if it does mean that people will be giving away some of their freedoms. Regulation will be able bring in more investors, which can then prove to be a very successful for investors as well, since the prices for the entire market will go up.