Wex Exchange Co-Owner Reportedly Detained in Russia

Authorities in Russia have arrested a crypto entrepreneur related to an unidentified cryptocurrency trade who’s suspected of embezzling funds and property. According to a media report, the detained individual is likely one of the house owners of Wex, successor of the notorious BTC-e trade.

Owner of Wex Exchange Apprehended in Russia

Russian legislation enforcement companies have detained a person accused of stealing monetary and different belongings from a cryptocurrency trade, the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) introduced Tuesday. The suspect allegedly managed massive quantities in cryptocurrency and their motion between wallets.

Investigators imagine he withdrew a few of the funds and appropriated them. The individual was handcuffed on the resort of a personal airfield in Serpukhov metropolis district of Moscow area with two suitcases holding 190 million Russian rubles in money ($1.7 million), the press launch detailed.

Officials from MVD, the Federal Security Service (FSB), and Russia’s monetary watchdog, Rosfinmonitoring, carried out 29 searches on the residences of the arrested and his accomplices in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, and Yalta. Another 50 million rubles, $1 million, €70,000, laptop gear, {hardware} crypto wallets, luxurious items, and paperwork have been seized.

While neither the detained individual, nor the trade have been named by the authorities, the crypto information outlet Forklog quoted Indefibank CEO Sergey Mendeleev who claims the person is Aleksey Bilyuchenko, co-founder of Wex, as soon as the biggest crypto buying and selling platform in Russia, which was launched in 2017 as a successor of BTC-e. The latter closed down earlier that yr following the arrest in Greece of one among its alleged operators, Alexander Vinnik.

Bilyuchenko’s possession of Wex was revealed by the BBC. Another Russian, Dmitry Vasiliev, was the official proprietor of the trade. In September, the Polish press reported that Vasiliev had been arrested on the Warsaw airport on Aug. 11 and was awaiting extradition to Kazakhstan. In December, information got here out that he had been released and had returned to Russia.

In 2018, Wex was offered to Dmitry Khavchenko, a former fighter for the breakaway Donetsk People’s Republic in Ukraine who then registered the operator of the trade, the Singapore-based firm World Exchange Services, below the title of his daughter, Daria. The trade went bankrupt later that yr. According to estimates by a bunch of Wex customers, the full losses exceed $400 million.

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