In Russia, the number of cryptocurrency-related court cases has risen

Russian courts in 2022 issued 1,758 rulings related to cryptocurrencies, up 14.83% from the year before (1,531). According to RBC-Crypto, citing RTM Group.

463 acts were drawn up in criminal cases. They primarily concerned fraud, appropriation or embezzlement of funds, money laundering and drug trafficking.

According to researchers, the most frequent violations involve cryptocurrency turnover on exchanges such as Binance and Garantex, as well as with wallets Blockchain, Coinomi, and the Bitmain mining pool.

More than half of the court acts (897) were issued in bankruptcy cases. There are also cases involving unmetered electricity usage for mining.

Experts expect that by the end of 2023 the number of court cases will have increased at least threefold due to the rapidly growing interest in cryptocurrencies and the emergence of new related fraud schemes.

In April 2022, the head of Russia’s Prosecutor-General’s Office, Igor Krasnov, called for include digital currencies in criminal law to investigate their theft and enable arrest.

In the same year, the Council of Legislators of the Russian Federation proposed to strengthen the penalties for crimes involving the use of cryptocurrencies.