Tether tokens found to facilitate scheme that enables sanctions evasion and launders money for the Kremlin
A cryptocurrency backed by one of Nigel Farage’s biggest donors has been used to help Russia fight its war against Ukraine, British investigators say.
The National Crime Agency has spent four years trying to crack a multibillion-dollar scheme that exchanges cash from drug and gun sales in the UK for crypto, digital tokens that are designed to hide their users’ identities.
The scheme has enabled “sanctions evasions and the highest levels of organised crime, including providing money-laundering services to the Russian state”, the agency says.
Of the $24m (£18.3m) in crypto that the NCA and its counterparts abroad have so far been able to seize, the “vast majority” was issued by Tether.
