BTC-e payment processor leads FinCEN files in mentions

The British company Mayzus Financial Services (MFS), which serviced the BTC-e bitcoin exchange, was the most-mentioned entity in Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) contained in the leak FinCEN data, BuzzFeed reports. This, сообщает BuzzFeed.

The FinCEN data contain 36 SARs about MFS, a record for the number of mentions.

According to the publication, the company acted as an intermediary in laundering cryptocurrency stolen from Mt.Gox through the BTC-e platform.

BuzzFeed cites last year\’s Global Witness report, in which говорится, that MFS and some of its employees had corporate accounts on BTC-e, through which allegedly the stolen bitcoins were laundered.

In a ForkLog interview, MFS owner Sergey Maizus refuted the publication\’s accusations and expressed astonishment that his company appeared in only 36 FinCEN reports.

«Mayzus Financial Services was a regulated financial institution to which the same anti-money-laundering laws apply as to any European banks. It had more than a million clients and, during its operation, submitted hundreds of suspicious-activity reports to the United Kingdom\’s National Crime Agency (NCA).»

He explained that, under the law, payment companies are required to receive and send clients\’ payments using their own bank accounts.

«The SWIFT format used in international financial operations was designed long before the appearance of payment financial organisations and was aimed only at banks. It does not allow specifying detailed information about the ultimate beneficiary, allowing only the name of the ultimate beneficiary in the \”payment instruction\” field, which is limited by the number of characters,\» noted Sergey Maizus.

That is why, according to him, US correspondent banks through which BTC-e\’s dollar payments passed saw only information about the financial institution MFS, which is one of the participants in the payment, but not the ultimate beneficiary.

«This, consequently, does not mean that the financial institution did not report the data of the ultimate beneficiary to regulators. From a legal standpoint, the \”facts\” cited in the publication are null and do not reflect reality,\» added Maizus.

Sergey Maizus has already sent his explanations to BuzzFeed reporter John Templeton, demanding that the mention of his company be removed from the piece and threatening a civil lawsuit to protect business reputation.

Earlier, the once-largest Bitcoin exchange Mt.Gox collapsed in early 2014 after reports of a suspected breach and the theft of 800,000 BTC (about $480 million at the time).

The alleged founder of BTC-e, Alexander Vinnik, was named the main suspect in the Mt.Gox funds theft case in July 2017. He is accused of laundering at least $4 billion. He is currently located in France awaiting trial.

According to Maizus, BTC-e, through Dmitry Svetleyashev, became a client of the offshore company Okpay in late summer 2011, which MFS learned about in June 2017 after acquiring the latter. It was from Svetleyashev\’s personal account that the hosting and domain for BTC-e were purchased.

Some time later, from the same IP address, an account was opened at Eurostyle Advisor, a company owned by Alexander Vinnik. According to Sergey Maizus, this company conducted transactions to BTC-e\’s client addresses and 15 offshore Cypriot companies involved in the money-laundering case through the exchange.

For the first time, in 2013, MFS began sending reports on the activities of companies belonging to Vinnik to the NCA; the payment system had suspicions about certain transactions that might be linked to tax evasion.

As part of the BTC-e proceedings, MFS blocked all platform accounts and handed over information about connected individuals and entities to UK law enforcement authorities.

In February 2020, Sergey Maizus told ForkLog that among the organizers and participants in the BTC-e money-laundering scheme were poker players who used bank accounts at Moscow\’s Alfa-Bank branch.

Sergey Maizus: the BTC-e bitcoin exchange laundered cryptocurrency through accounts at Moscow\’s Alfa-Bank

Earlier, ForkLog reported that the subject of the FinCEN file became OneCoin founder Ruja Ignatova.

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