Media: Ukrainian official reports disappearance of $647,000 in cryptocurrency

Maxim Kiselyov, head of the Department of the Executive Service at Ukraine’s Ministry of Justice, told cyberpolice about a theft of $647,000 in cryptocurrency. The report is from «СтопКор», citing law-enforcement sources.

The case was opened in May. According to the materials, from June to December 2022 Kiselyov acquired virtual assets worth $700,000. He allegedly planned to help a family that had left Ukraine after the war began and moved to Spain. There the family owns a €1.5 million mansion.

The official said he began investing in cryptocurrencies on the advice of a married couple — Oleg Gromov and Vita Efimchuk.

It was Gromov who, according to Kiselyov, helped him create a Binance account, and then configure a Ledger wallet, where the assets were stored. The device was later in the hands of the official’s wife, Alexandra Goryaeva.

In late April 2023 she noticed the crypto wallet had been emptied. She contacted Gromov by phone, who suggested there had been a system glitch.

However, a few days later he sent a screenshot showing that on 14 February 2023 more than $647,000 had been withdrawn from Kiselyov’s wallet. On the same day Gromov left Ukraine.

According to investigators, 60,000 USDT ended up on the account of Ukrainian citizen Dmitry Djioev on the Binance exchange. Another 587,000 USDT were sent to another wallet, from which several transactions were transferred to addresses, two of which belong to Russian citizens Kirill Zotov and Alexander Mikhailov. In total they received more than 284,000 USDT.

Subsequently, assets from those wallets were converted into Bitcoin and transferred to another Russian — Daniil Bronihin. The latter subsequently sent Gromov a total of $56,650.

The police opened a fraud and document forgery investigation. Although the defendants are Gromov, Efimchuk and Djioev, investigators of the ORD project have not ruled out that Kiselyov himself could have been involved in the withdrawal of funds.

Earlier this summer, the Security Service and the Bureau of Economic Security of Ukraine liquidated a network of underground cryptocurrency exchanges, which operated with Russian payment systems.