While on the official level, the USA is hinting to Russia about the possibility of lifting sanctions if progress is made in a peaceful settlement in Ukraine, the regular clerks of the US Treasury Department are doing their best to collect dossiers on Russian financial criminals.
The issue of US sanctions is on the agenda of negotiations between the USA and Russia. This is evidenced by numerous statements made by officials on both sides. It has to be noticed that for the White House, sanctions remain a powerful tool for influencing the Kremlin. For Moscow, the lifting of sanctions is necessary to save the Russian economy from collapse, which could be followed by political turbulence and the fall of Putin’s regime. There is still no talk of a complete lifting of US sanctions.
Until recently, the USA was mostly engaged in the development and implementation of sanctions against Russian major players. Their logic is pretty simple. Such sanctions are most sensitive to Putin’s inner circle and the Russian economy and also have the greatest effect on the media.
Such a strategy was quite effective, but extremely slow, as the Kremlin managed to adapt to the sanctions each time and find new ways to circumvent them. However, because of such a strategy, thousands of Russian criminal gangs around the world engaged in financial fraud, dirty money laundering and circumvention of sanctions remained outside the close attention of the US Treasury. Tens of billions of dollars earned by Russian financial criminals were eventually used to finance the war with Ukraine.
However, at the end of last year, the situation began to change. On December 4, 2024, the Ministry of Finance issued a notification on the imposition of sanctions against individuals associated with the TGR Group, an international network of companies and individuals who helped circumvent sanctions in the interests of the Russian Federation.
It was reported that the TGR Group, controlled by a citizen of Ukraine, George Rossi, offered Russian clients services such as money laundering, exchanging cash for cryptocurrency, and hiding the source of funds.
In addition to George Rossi, Russians Elena Chirkinyan, Hadji Murad Magomedova, Nikita Krasnova, and Latvian Andreis Bradens were sanctioned by the USA. The US sanctions also include TGR Partners (Moscow), TGR Corporate Concierge (Britain), TGR DWC-LLC (UAE), Siam Expert (Thailand), and Pullman Global Solutions (USA).
According to Acting Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Bradley Smith, “With the help of the TGR Group, Russian elites tried to use digital assets, in particular, stablecoins backed by US dollars, to avoid US and international sanctions, further enriching themselves and the Kremlin.”
TGR Group was an average player, so the imposition of sanctions against it may indicate that the Ministry of Finance began to delve into the wilds of global Russian financial crime. Sources suggest that another criminal group, the BLESAVARIS GROUP, may become the next object of close attention of the American financial department.
Right now, we are talking about a network financial company registered in the UAE (Dubai), with branches and affiliated companies in Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, Armenia, Austria, as well as in Ukraine. All of these countries, except Ukraine, are actively used by Russia to circumvent international sanctions. Sources familiar with the BLESAVARIS GROUP dossier note that its member companies are actively engaged in financial fraud, including the usage of cryptocurrency. Information about this can be found in the media and social networks.
According to the sources, one of the proofs that this international criminal group is working for the Kremlin is the existence of two declared businessmen associated with the Russian intelligence services. The first is Russian Anton Adzhiev, who is the founder of the BLESAVARIS GROUP. He was born in Moscow. In the period of 1999-2023, he was actively involved in business in Russia, in particular, in the Chechen Republic, where he had numerous contacts with representatives of the Federal Security Service (FSB) and the leadership of the republic. In 2016, Adzhiev moved to Ukraine permanently and received a Ukrainian passport. He is considered to be involved in numerous illegal financial frauds in Ukraine.
The second “businessman” is Valeriy Mazurov, a citizen of Belarus and Russia, who heads the Belarusian branch of BLESAVARIS GROUP. Mazurov is a citizen of Belarus and Russia, who worked in senior positions in the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Belarus. According to sources, in 2017 Mazurov was recruited by the Russian FSB. He currently runs the branch, helping the Kremlin circumvent American and European sanctions. He commits financial fraud with cryptocurrency in Belarus under the cover of the Russian special services. It is considered inviolable for Belarusian law enforcement agencies to be informed about Mazurov’s crimes.
According to the sources, the investigation against online financial criminal groups such as the BLESAVARIS GROUP is ongoing. At the final stage, the USA will be able to create a specific list of sanctions that can be used at any given moment in time. This list will also include sanctions against all persons associated with these structures. It is possible that Adzhiev, Mazurov, and BLESAVARIS GROUP may be included in a broader sanctions package that the Ministry of Finance introduces from time to time against international financial criminals. One way or another, Washington’s intolerance of financial crimes that threaten the national interests of the USA looks like something pretty stable and permanent regardless of the head of the White House.