Russian Court Recognizes Cryptocurrency as Means of Payment, Prosecutors See Precedent

The City Court of St. Petersburg has acknowledged a considerable amount of cryptocurrency handed over by the sufferer in an extortion case as a method of fee, Russian media reported. The prosecutor’s workplace in Russia’s second-largest metropolis describes the ruling as a precedent.

Two Men Sentenced for Cryptocurrency Extortion in Russia

Two Russian residents have been sentenced to 9 and 7 years in jail below strict regime for extorting 5 million rubles (virtually $90,000) in money and 55 million rubles (near $1 million) in digital belongings from one other man.

In the course of the trial, the St. Petersburg City Court has acknowledged the cryptocurrency as a method of fee, the crypto web page of Russian enterprise information portal RBC reported. Prosecutors think about the ruling a primary, as the federal government in Moscow is but to find out the legal status of bitcoin and the like.

Four years in the past, one of many perpetrators, Pyotr Piron, launched himself to the sufferer, G.A. Shemet, as an officer from the Federal Security Service (FSB). He threatened Shemet with legal prosecution to extort cash from him within the type of fiat and cryptocurrency, the article particulars.

As Shemet didn’t imagine Piron was a safety official and refused to offer him the funds, the latter enlisted the companies of an confederate, Yevgeny Prigozhin, a former worker of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD).

The two advised Shemet a legal investigation shall be launched in opposition to him for alleged unlawful circulation of cryptocurrency. In the summer season of 2018, they staged a faux arrest of the crypto proprietor who, below the specter of torture, handed over the fiat money and his crypto stash.

The metropolis courtroom’s preliminary determination didn’t have in mind the misappropriated crypto. It acknowledged within the verdict that cryptocurrency “will not be a method of fee on the territory of the Russian Federation, subsequently it can’t be acknowledged as an object of civil rights and a topic of a criminal offense.”

Following an attraction, a cassation courtroom declared that the cryptocurrency can nonetheless be thought-about a method of fee and returned the case to the courtroom of first occasion. Without altering the jail phrases of the defendants, the town courtroom issued a brand new verdict, including the digital money.

The growth comes after final month, a district courtroom in St. Petersburg allowed regulation enforcement officers to confiscate stolen cryptocurrency in one other legal case. Investigators had demanded the seizure of two dozen crypto wallets of a suspect, holding 1 billion rubles in ethereum (ETH).

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