US OFCA adds new Russia-linked ETH & BTC address to sanction list
The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) once again took action to fight against Russia, as a part of international financial sanctions on Russia.
Russia is a tech adoptive country and in the past several years this country was not friendly toward the Crypto sector but its conflict with Ukraine, which started in late Feb 2022, changed the whole game. To slow down the war efforts of the Russian military in Ukraine, many countries imposed financial & trade sanctions on Russia. Since 2022, Russian government agencies are trying to drag a path to bypass such sanctions.
On 1 Feb 2023, The U.S. the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced that the agency imposed full sanctions on 22 individuals & groups linked to many countries, including Russia.
OFCA announcement stated:
“As part of these (section & restriction) efforts, Igor and Jonatan Zimenkov both had direct correspondence with sanctioned Russian defense firms.”
In the list of sanctioned crypto assets, the US authority sanctioned one Ethereum address & one Bitcoin address. Agency failed to reveal those particular sanctioned addresses but confirmed that the Bitcoin address holding 0.01Btc & Ethereum address was used to transfer 5,400 ETH. The transactions activity in Ethereum addresses can’t be seen over the last 12 months and the Bitcoin address’ activity is zero after Dec 2022.
Russia moving toward Crypto Adoption
Over the last few months, many news reports confirmed that Russia was working to create a decentralised payment model with the help of blockchain tech & gold-pegged stablecoin concept.
Recent reports noted that Russia is failing to develop such a payment model and is considering dragging Bitcoin & Ethereum into its future decentralised payment system.
Initially in mid-2022, when the Russia vs Ukraine war was at a peak, many Russian government agencies proposed the idea to bring Ethereum & Bitcoin into the international trade settlement to overcome the problem that arose because of the Western countries’ financial sanctions on the country.
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