IRS Gives Ukraine Tools to Expose Russian Oligarchs Hiding Wealth in Crypto Exchanges

[ad_1]

The IRS Criminal Investigations Division is donating 15 licenses for the Chainalysis Reactor platform to a team of Ukrainian investigators as part of the ongoing effort to identify and unravel the financial networks Russian oligarchs are using to avoid sanctions international, the agency announced on Thursday.

The donation comes as staff from the IRS’ Criminal Investigations Unit and Chainalysis, a company that sells blockchain analysis and investigative tools, kick off a week of advanced training on the platform. of the company for 20 Ukrainian investigators in Germany, after previous virtual training for about 50 Ukrainians. law enforcement officers.

“It is important for us to identify all Russian assets on the territory of Ukraine,” said Eduard Fedorov, acting director of Ukraine’s Economic Security Bureau. “We resist the aggressor state not only on the battlefield, but also on the economic front. The international experience of conducting investigations from digital data and studying algorithms to fight against financial networks contributes to increasing the professionalism of our employees.

IRS-CI chief Jim Lee said in a statement that the trainings help investigators “hone their digital investigative skills to trace the source of blockchain funds and unmask cryptocurrency transactions with cryptocurrency forensic tools”. Michael Gronager, CEO of Chainalysis, said in a statement that “cryptocurrency is playing an unprecedented role in Ukraine, both in good and bad ways”, from “facilitating donations to ransomware attacks and evasion of sanctions”.

The IRS-CI has 23 ongoing sanctions-related investigations, the agency said in a statement, as part of the US government’s KleptoCapture task force, launched about a week after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

In November, Andrew Adams, head of the Justice Department’s task force, said the government was starting to shift its focus from seizing things like private jets and yachts to “facilitative networks, supply, money laundering networks”. Wall Street Journal reported at the time. By mid-April, the US government had seized approximately $500 million in assets under the auspices of the task force.

[ad_2]