Belarus Issues International Arrest Warrant for Owner of Country’s ‘Largest Crypto Exchange’ – Exchange Bitcoin News

Law enforcement officials in Minsk are seeking international assistance to locate and arrest the man who ran what is said to be the largest online cryptocurrency exchange in Belarus. The crypto trader has been accused of tax evasion and an investigation against three of his accomplices has estimated the losses to the state at 3.5 million dollars.

Belarusian operator of Bitok.me now wanted internationally for tax offences

The authorities of Belarus have recently completed a criminal investigation against three residents of the city of Lida, who helped the owner of an illegal crypto exchange platform to avoid taxes. Vladislav Kuchinsky, who managed Bitok.me (formerly Bitok.by) for two years, has been accused of “tax evasion on a particularly large scale” and placed on an international wanted list.

During that period, Kuchinsky and his “representatives” used the platform to facilitate the buying and selling of “digital tokens (tokens),” the legal term used to define cryptocurrencies under Belarusian law, with fiat cash and non-cash payments . They also offered exchanges between cryptocurrencies, the Investigative Committee of Belarus explained this week.

In total, Bitoks operators conducted nearly 8,000 transactions involving digital currencies for a total amount of over $29 million, detailed in a press release. The estimated damage to the state budget, as a result of tax evasion in their activities, amounted to more than 9 million Belarusian rubles (over 3.5 million dollars at current exchange rates).

The officials in Minsk also pointed out that the suspects used anonymization tools, SIM cards registered under false identities and accounts on foreign crypto platforms that allowed them to stay under the radar. Eventually, investigators were able to identify all the participants in the crypto-trading scheme, intercept their correspondence with clients, and trace their money transfers.

During the search, the police confiscated computer equipment, documents and took out $280,000 in cash. Belarusian police officers were also able to establish the bank accounts used by the defendants in Belarus and Georgia that had 2 million rubles (nearly $800,000) in their balances, and arrest them.

With assistance from Moscow, Belarus obtained a database containing information on 2,000 of Bitok’s clients whose activities are also under investigation. Those who made the largest transactions, over $50,000 in fiat equivalents, have been questioned, the investigative department said.

Crypto Exchanger continues operations pending investigation

Despite the detention of his accomplices and their prosecution, Vladislav Kuchinsky continued to operate the online exchange, advising clients to ignore calls from law enforcement and attempting to withdraw money from the frozen accounts. Belarus has now issued an international arrest warrant for the owner of Bitok, charging him with tax evasion in absentia.

The Investigative Committee emphasized that the operation of the crypto-trading service was illegal as it was not properly registered as a resident of the Belarus High-Tech Park (HTP). The latter is responsible for implementing a special legal regime established to facilitate the development of the country’s digital economy, including the crypto sector.

Belarus legalized business activities related to cryptoassets with a decree signed by President Alexander Lukashenko in 2017, which took effect in the spring of the following year. It introduced tax breaks and other incentives for companies working with digital currencies that register with the HTP in Minsk.

Although last spring Lukashenko hinted at a possible tightening of rules for the industry and ordered the creation of a crypto wallet registry, and despite a ban on the use of bitcoin for payments, Belarus ranked third in Eastern Europe in terms of crypto adoption, largely due to strong peer-to-peer activity, as indicated by the Crypto Adoption Index produced by blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis.

Do you expect Belarusian authorities to crack down on other unregistered crypto trading platforms? Tell us in the comments section below.

Lubomir Tassev

Lubomir Tassev is a journalist from tech-savvy Eastern Europe who likes Hitchens’ quote: “To be a writer is what I am, rather than what I do.” Besides crypto, blockchain and fintech, international politics and economics are two other sources of inspiration.