In the summer of 2023, research company Elliptic described financing scheme for the terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Over the past few years she received more than $90 million in stablecoins in their walletstranslations took place through the Russian crypto exchange Garantex and the decentralized exchange Sunswap, the researchers argued.
The Wall Street Journal recently drew attention to this publication in a large investigation dedicated to Garantex. It says that the crypto exchange located in Moscow City assists in circumventing sanctions, launders money from cybercriminals and is likely collaborating with Russian security forces.
The Dossier Center also previously told about Garantex. We noticed that a third of the company – through the Estonian Garantex Europe OU – belonged to Irina Chernyavskaya, a modest employee of the tax office. Chernyavskaya, as we found out, cohabits with a certain Pavel Karavatsky (the woman was registered in his apartment, they parked the same cars). In many phone books, Karavatsky is listed as “Garantex” or “Garantex security guy.” We assumed that in reality it was Karavatsky is a co-owner of the crypto exchangealthough formally the share was registered in the name of his girlfriend.
Karavatsky is Oleg Feoktistov’s manthe former deputy head of the Internal Security Service of the FSB of Russia, one of the most powerful Russian security officials, said Dossier’s interlocutor, who is well acquainted with the intelligence services. Feoktistov once created the “Sechin special forces” within the FSB and is generally considered a protégé of Igor Sechin. Karavatsky graduated from the Moscow University of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and worked as a security guard at RRDB and Peresvet banks, associated with Feoktistov.
The WSJ publication describes meeting of heads of Russian crypto exchanges with representatives of the FSBheld in the spring of 2021. Citing sources, journalists claim that at this meeting, security forces demanded that information about users of crypto exchanges be shared as much as possible. It was then – in March 2021 – Irina Chernyavskaya and became a shareholder of Garantex.
Palestinian Islamic Jihad is a terrorist group from the Gaza Strip that was involved in the recent attack on Israel. It is believed to be entirely financed by Iran.
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