On April 23, the Savelovsky District Court of Moscow granted a claim to recover 18 billion rubles from WEX system administrator Alexey Bilyuchenko (Ivanov). This was reported by journalist Irek Murtazin in his Telegram channel.
The plaintiff was the official operator of WEX, the Singaporean company World Exchange Services, represented by owner Igor Pravdin. Until July 2023, the exchange was owned by Dmitry “Sailor” Khavchenko.
The decision has not yet come into legal force.
Previously, World Exchange Services had already secured a court order for the recovery of 3.1 billion rubles of WEX assets, which Bilyuchenko was accused of embezzling. In this case, the “red admin” was sentenced in September 2023 to 3.5 years in prison and a fine of 500,000 rubles.
Bilyuchenko himself called the punishment “too harsh”. He also stated that all the funds received are “authorized by Pravdin to be personally distributed among the exchange’s users” as compensation for damages.
Earlier, two former employees of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, who were investigating the WEX case, were arrested in absentia and placed on an international wanted list on charges of receiving a bribe of 4.9 billion rubles in cryptocurrencies from Bilyuchenko.