Britain’s National Crime Agency (NCA) on Wednesday announced that she led an international investigation to disrupt Russian money-laundering networks found to be facilitating serious and organized crime in the UK, the Middle East, Russia and South America.
A code-named effort Operation “Destabilization”.led to the arrest of 84 suspects linked to two Russian-language networks, Smart and TGR. In addition, £20 million ($25.4 million) in cash and cryptocurrency was seized.
Both enterprises are located in the Moscow Federation tower, per Telegraphwhich is known act as a center for money laundering firms.
Concurrent with the liquidation and arrests, the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed sanctions against five individuals and four entities associated with TGR Group.
“Through the TGR group, Russian elites have sought to use digital assets – specifically US dollar-backed stablecoins – to evade US and international sanctions, further enriching themselves and the Kremlin,” said Acting Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Bradley T. Smith.
Describing it as an extensive network for evasion of sanctions and money laundering, the Ministry of Finance said that TGR Group used other illegal entities, such as Smart Group, which is headed by Ekaterina Zhdanova. Zhdanova was in November 2023 sanctioned for helping wealthy Russian citizens and cybercriminal groups launder cryptocurrency proceeds.
Zhdanova was also accused of offering services to individuals associated with the now-defunct Ryuk ransomware group to launder more than $2.3 million in alleged victim payouts in 2021.
TGR Group is said to provide a wide range of illicit financial services, including laundering funds belonging to sanctioned entities, an unregistered cash and cryptocurrency exchange service, accepting cashier’s checks and converting them into digital assets for customers, a prepaid service credit cards, and concealing the source of the funds that allow Russian elites to buy real estate in the UK
The NCA noted that the Smart network was used to fund Russian espionage operations between late 2022 and the summer of 2023. The exact nature of the malicious activity is not disclosed.
“Smart and TGR provide a service that allows Russian elites, as well as individuals and entities, access to Western economies that would otherwise be denied to them due to sanctions or other financial restrictions,” the agency said.
“For the first time, we have been able to identify links between Russian elites, crypto-rich cybercriminals and drug gangs on the streets of the UK. The thread that bound them together – the combined power of Smart and TGR – has been invisible until now.”
