{"id":80161,"date":"2023-06-13T16:34:06","date_gmt":"2023-06-13T13:34:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/?p=80161"},"modified":"2025-09-11T15:10:29","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T12:10:29","slug":"belarus-shuts-down-illegal-bitcoin-exchange-with-3-5m-in-revenue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/belarus-shuts-down-illegal-bitcoin-exchange-with-3-5m-in-revenue\/","title":{"rendered":"Belarus shuts down illegal Bitcoin exchange with $3.5m in revenue"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In Minsk, authorities dismantled a major illegal cryptocurrency exchange, whose revenues amounted to at least 9 million Belarusian rubles (over $3.5 million). <a href=\"https:\/\/sk.gov.by\/ru\/news-ru\/view\/presechena-dejatelnost-krupnogo-tenevogo-kriptoobmennika-na-territorii-minska-12622\/\">\u0441\u043e\u043e\u0431\u0449\u0438\u043b\u0438<\/a> to the Belarusian Investigative Committee.<\/p>\n<p>Law enforcement authorities detained two men, who are charged with operating an illegal cryptocurrency exchange and tax evasion.<\/p>\n<p>According to the investigation materials, the exchange operated since 2019 without the necessary registration as a resident of the Hi-Tech Park. In addition to Belarus, the defendants conducted exchange business in the UAE, Armenia, Georgia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Ukraine and Tajikistan.<\/p>\n<p>During searches of the office and suspects&#8217; residences, investigators seized cash, cryptocurrency and digital storage devices. According to one of the detainees, the Minsk-based exchange yielded a net monthly income of about $7,000.<\/p>\n<p>Operatives also detained a counterparty of the liquidated exchange who conducted activity via an automated Telegram chat bot. His earnings reached 7.5 million Belarusian rubles ($2.9 million), and the amount of unpaid taxes exceeded 1.2 million Belarusian rubles ($475,000).<\/p>\n<p>Moreover, according to the Investigative Committee, more than 30% of the operations took place on darknet marketplaces, which could indicate that they financed their criminal activity.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier in May, the National Police of Ukraine, in cooperation with the FBI, blocked <a href=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/news\/ukrainian-police-shut-down-nine-bitcoin-exchanges\">nine cryptocurrency exchanges<\/a> that were used to launder criminal funds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Minsk, authorities dismantled a major illegal cryptocurrency exchange, whose revenues amounted to at least 9 million Belarusian rubles (over $3.5 million).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":80162,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"select":"1","news_style_id":"1","cryptorium_level":"","_short_excerpt_text":"","creation_source":"","_metatest_mainpost_news_update":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[239,1154,1257],"class_list":["post-80161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-belarus","tag-crimes","tag-currency-exchanges"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"views":"14","promo_type":"1","layout_type":"1","short_excerpt":"","is_update":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80161"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80163,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80161\/revisions\/80163"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}