The Bitzlato cryptocurrency exchange platform, whose infrastructure was seized by the French prosecutor’s office, провела технический аудит as part of the announced resumption of operations.
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According to its findings, some cryptocurrency deposits remain under the control of French law enforcement. According to the team, the platform’s source code has been compromised, making its further use unsafe.
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«Reviving old code is possible, but it would attract marks from AML-services. Therefore a decision was made to develop new software capable of resisting AML-service attacks», — the team’s statement says.
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The developers have already introduced the Telegram bot @bz_alive_bot, which shows the balance of user wallets at the moment the service was halted.
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Bitzlato has also published a roadmap for restoration work, which will be updated.
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By February 24, the service will convert the balance of altcoins into bitcoin at the rate at the time of the stoppage (January 18). This step, as explained, is taken due to the impossibility of technically launching an exchange supporting multiple cryptocurrencies.
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On March 1, Bitzlato will add the ability to withdraw up to 50% of deposits in bitcoins. From March 14, users will be able to use the P2P service as a wallet to store funds in Telegram.
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From April 2, the team will open the P2P service for trading cryptocurrencies.
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Bitzlato is currently appealing the seizure of servers in France, where part of users’ funds were stored. Staff are also developing a strategy to return the remaining portion of the debt to clients.
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The co-founder of the crypto exchange Anton Shkurenko promised ForkLog that a detailed response on the situation would be provided soon.
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Earlier, on January 17, the U.S. Department of Justice arrested the founder of Bitzlato Anatoly Legkodymov on charges of laundering $700 million tied to the darknet marketplace Hydra.
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On January 18 the platform team announced a hack and withdrawal of part of the funds. A few hours later they announced that the service had been suspended.
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Subsequently, it became known of the arrest of former chief executive Mikhail Lunev, marketing manager Alexander Goncharenko, the contractor for implementing Monolithos DAO Pavel Lerner, and the platform’s systems administrator.
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On February 7 the company’s co-founder Anton Shkurenko was summoned for questioning at the Tverskoy Interdistrict Prosecutor’s Office in Moscow. Representatives requested from France materials of the criminal case against Bitzlato to study the possibility of opening additional proceedings on the territory of the Russian Federation.
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According to Europol, in total the exchange converted assets tied to criminal activity worth around €1 billion ($1.08 billion). The transactions were conducted in Bitcoin, Dash, Litecoin, as well as dollars and Russian rubles.