On February 8th, the Moscow City Court began reviewing the appeal of Alexey Bilyuchenko (Ivanov), the system administrator of the cryptocurrency exchange WEX, against his previous conviction. This was reported by journalist Irek Murtazin on his Telegram channel.
Bilyuchenko is accused of embezzling 3.1 billion rubles of WEX assets. In September 2023, the court of first instance sentenced him to 3.5 years in prison and a fine of 500,000 rubles.
The defendant considers this sentence “too harsh.” He requests the unfreezing of his assets, claiming that his blocked account at Alfa-Bank allegedly holds enough funds to fully cover the damages. The “Red Admin” cites his cooperation with the investigation, the presence of mitigating factors, and the absence of aggravating circumstances.
After hearing the arguments, the court scheduled the next session for February 29th.
Bilyuchenko has been in pre-trial detention since March 2022. Given that a year in detention is equivalent to one and a half years in a general regime colony, he stands a good chance of being released once the sentence is finalized.
The victim in the case is listed as the current owner of the Singapore-registered company World Exchange Services, an Armenian citizen named Igor Pravdin. Until July 2023, the company’s assets were owned by Dmitry “Sailor” Khavchenko.