Hydra or “Hydra” – the largest π·πΊ Russian darknet market for drug trafficking, as well as the largest in π the world’s resource for the volume of illegal transactions with cryptocurrency. Yesterday π©πͺ German Federal Criminal Police statedwhich confiscated Hydraβs server infrastructure and bitcoins on πΆ 23 million. Thus, the platformβs activities were completely suspended.
The second blow of the day to Hydra was πΊπΈ sanctions USA. The basis was decree No. 13694, and the formal reason was the abuse of virtual currency for money laundering. Let us note an interesting form of inclusion in the sanctions lists – the Ministry of Finance separately listed 100 crypto-wallets associated with the exchange. All transactions with the specified wallets are available on platform Etherscan. The total turnover is calculated πΈ tens of billions of dollars. According to German police, Hydra had about 17 million users and more than 19 thousand sellers. A significant part of sellers and buyers are π·πΊ Russians.
We cannot fail to mention the second organization that came under US sanctions. She became registered in πͺπͺ Estonia crypto exchange Garantex. According to πΊπΈ Ministry of Finance, most of the operations Garantex carried out in Moscow, including in the notorious Federation-East tower, as well as in St. Petersburg (if St. Petersburg also has a cult location for money laundering – write in the comments).
Transaction analysis Garantex showswhich is more than 100 π΅ million of the turnover of crypto wallets were associated with darknet entities and markets, including almost π΅ 6 million from Russian cybercriminal group Contias well as about π΅ 2.6 million from Hydra.
I wonder what Garantex was stripped of its Estonian virtual wallet service provider license only in February of this year. We assume that financial regulators of jurisdictions popular with crypto-services will conduct additional checks in terms of compliance with legislation on AML and sanctions.
“ΠΠ§Π ΠΠΠΠ£”
