The trail that led to the enormous ... piles of cash from street sales into the legitimate economy. That, in turn, made it harder for them to buy in more produce, such as cocaine from South America. The NCA says two cryptocurrency networks based in Moscow, known as Smart and TGR, offered a solution. Both were sitting on large piles of cryptocurrency from ransomware attacks. That’s a form of online extortion in which a gang paralyses an ...
The trail that led to the enormous and complicated network was spotted during the 2021 pandemic lockdown, as drugs gangs across Europe struggled to move piles of cash from street sales into the legitimate economy. That, in turn, made it harder for them to buy in more produce, such as cocaine from South America. The NCA says two cryptocurrency networks based in Moscow, known as Smart and TGR, offered a solution. Both were sitting on large piles of cryptocurrency from ransomware attacks. That’s a form of online extortion in which a gang paralyses an organisation’s computer systems until it pays a fee to regain control.He and his associates collected more than £12m in drugs cash in just 10 weeks to be exchanged for virtual currency. Last February, he was jailed for almost six years. So far, the NCA and its partners have seized £20m in cash, relating to an estimated £700m in drugs sales - and the vast majority of the arrests and charges so far are of couriers like Saiedi and Kuksov.However, Zhdanova's alleged role in assisting sanctioned individuals is just one part of what the NCA says are her links to Moscow. Investigators say that, in 2022, the Russian state used the Smart and TGR crypto-exchange services to move funds for espionage. Then, in 2023, the NCA says the scheme helped the state-controlled Russia Today media platform, banned in the UK, move cash into the country for one of its operations.UK drug gangs paid Russian criminals to swap their dirty street cash for untraceable cryptocurrency, police say.
