At least four companies suspected of money laundering and allegedly linked to ransomware hackers are based in the 97-storey Tower East of the Federation Complex in the Moscow City Business Center.
According to the agency, we are talking about the companies Suex OTC, EggChange, CashBank and Buy-bitcoin.pro.
Suex OTC is under US sanctions for helping cyber extortionists launder money. According to the research company Chainalysis, since 2018 Suex has processed at least $160 million in bitcoins from illegal and high-risk sources.
The largest shareholder of Suex at the time of the sanctions, Egor Petukhovsky, denied the involvement of his business in money laundering by hackers in October and announced that he would defend his position in an American court.
According to three Bloomberg sources, the US and Europe are also investigating EggChange on charges of money laundering. The world's largest cryptocurrency trading platform Binance said it also noticed “illegal flows” of funds going through EggChange and CashBank.
Chainalysis claims that the company Buy-bitcoin.pro, whose headquarters are also located in the Tower Federation-East, processed hundreds of thousands of dollars of funds from ransomware and other illegal operators, including Russia's largest darknet drug market Hydra.
Bloomberg writes that at least 50 companies converting cryptocurrency into cash are registered in Moscow City Tower. Cybersecurity and cryptocurrency experts consider Moscow City Tower to be one of the most influential points in the world of cryptocurrency cashing. Experts added that such operations are not illegal, but without serious supervision, such a business can help hackers to cash out criminal proceeds.
Stanislav Bibik, a partner at Colliers, explained the large concentration of cryptocurrency firms in the Tower Federation-East by the fact that this address is trustworthy. “Working there gives the tenant a high status and indicates that he has a solid business,” Bibik said.
