It wasn't a good week for Russian crypto exchange Garantex.
First, on Thursday, Stablecoin Issuer Tether blocked access to Garantex's wallet, which holds approximately $28 million in Crypto Exchange funds. On the same day, the official Garantex website was seized by international law enforcement operations led by the Secret Service in the US. At the time, Garantex didn't mention this operation on its official telegram channel. Instead, the company announced that it would “suspend all services, including the withdrawal of cryptocurrency.”
Then on Friday, the U.S. Department of Justice announced accusations against two of the exchange's managers, Aleksej Besciokov and Aleksandr Mira Serda, denounced the pair promoting money laundering on the platform on behalf of cybercriminals and terrorists. US prosecutors also said they have frozen more than $26 million in tether and bitcoin, which were used to promote money laundering.
As of Saturday, Garantex had provided its customers with a potential lifeline.
Contact Us Are you planning to attend a meeting in Garantex office? Or do you have more information about the exchange? From unprocessed devices and networks, you can safely contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai with a signal of +1 917 257 1382, via Telegram and Keybase @lorenzofb, or by email. You can also contact TechCrunch via SecureDrop.
Without acknowledging law enforcement lawsuits, Garantex published an announcement on the official Telegram Channel saying it “developed a solution for blocked assets,” and, according to machine translations, it invites customers with a balance of positive accounts “to a personal meeting in a Moscow office.”
Garatex said it would launch “face-to-face meetings” in the office as of Monday, asking customers to arrive “with access to phones and emails to which their accounts are linked.”
The company's demands are rare, and in a world that appreciates anonymity like the crypto world. Despite the risks of the Russian government itself, showing up in the offices of companies approved by both the US government and the European Union raises difficult-to-predict risks to customers, and there is no guarantee that Galatex will be able to refund the customers at this point.
According to DOJ, it is unclear exactly how many customers Garantex has, but since 2019 the exchange has processed more than $96 billion in cryptocurrency transactions. Garantex is likely to have a large number of customers, many of whom do not live near Moscow.
Garantex did not respond to requests for comment.