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American prosecutors have sued a cryptocurrency entrepreneur for sanctions discharge and violations of export control, claiming that he has washed more than $ 500 million and has helped Russians acquire sensitive American technology.
IURII Gugnin, founder of the payment company Evita Pay and a Delaware company called Evita Investments in Florida, was charged on Monday with wire and bank fraud, money laundering of money and other violations, according to judicial documents that are not concluded in the federal court in Brooklyn. He was arrested and lived in New York, said the Ministry of Justice.
Public Prosecutors said that Gugnin made payments on behalf of foreign customers for American electronics who included an American designed server that depends on export controls, and for components for Rosatom, the Russian state -owned company Nuclear technology company.
“Gugnin came to the United States and founded a money laundering operation under the guise of a cryptocurrency start-up, which he then used to avoid sanctions and to export controls and to cheat American financial institutions,” said American lawyer Joseph Nocella in a statement.
John Eisenberg, assistant-procurur-general for national security at the Ministry of Justice, accused Gugnin of “changing a cryptocurrency company in a secret pipeline for dirty money”.
In a letter to a judge in New York on Monday, prosecutors said that Gugnin “had connections with government officials in Russia and Iran who could help facilitate his flight of prosecution, including members of the Russian intelligence services”. He is confronted with 22 counts, some with maximum penalties of 30 years in prison, the letter said.
A representative for Gugnin, 38, did not immediately respond to a request for comments.
According to the indictment, Gugnin, also known as Iurii Mashukov and George Goognin, lived in the US on an O-1A visa, that is for people with an “extraordinary capacity or performance”. It said that he had moved to New York in 2022 and “had been depicted himself as a serial entrepreneur”.
Prosecutors claim that he has facilitated almost $ 2 billion in transactions, and that many of his customers were in Russia and had funds in sanctioned Russian banks. Other customers were in China and the United Arab Emirates.
Approximately $ 365 million of the approximately $ 530 million in funds he moved through the American system arose in Tether, they claim, and the vast majority of those transactions were associated with Evita Investments instead of Evita Pay.
The indictment said that customers have provided the companies of Gugnin Crypto, which he was washed through cryptocurrency portfolios and American bank accounts, converting the funds into US dollars or other currencies and subsequently made payments on behalf of his customers. It says that customers have used him to make payments for artworks and to a French hunting company.
It says that he has facilitated payments for Yiwu Vortex Import and Export Co Limited, a distributor established in Hong Kong who placed the US sanctions last year, who accused the illegal export of maritime equipment to Russia.
The court documents describe a transaction in which a South Korean group agreed to provide an entity-based entity with parts and equipment that subsequently provided it to Rosatom, the nuclear group of Russia.
The archives also say that he has facilitated the purchase of a Rack server from a Russian customer that was manufactured by an American technology company at a time when it was illegal to export the technology without a license to Russia.