Russians using USDT to transfer money outside country amid sanctions: Report
Reportedly many Russians are using sanctioned Russian banks issued debit cards to purchase crypto assets on Huobi & Kucoin crypto exchange, despite financial sanctions on Russian banks as a part of Russia vs Ukraine conflict over a year ago.
In late Feb 2022, Russia vs Ukraine conflict started on the ground level and at that time majority of the countries supported Ukraine and imposed financial sanctions on Russia to degrade the confidence of the Russian government. To this date all the Russian Banks are limited with their services to Russia because of the financial sanctions and also all the global crypto exchanges followed the sanction & decided not to provide services to Russian crypto investors, to comply with international financial sanction rules.
Recently Bloomberg reported that many Russians are using debit cards issued by sanctioned Russian banks to purchase crypto assets on the crypto exchanges like Huobi Global, and Kucoin.
The whole report was part of an investigation by the data analytics firm Inca Digital. Adam Zarazinski, the CEO of Inca Digital, spoke with Bloomberg and said that such crypto exchanges are surely violating the international financial sanctions imposed by several countries against Russia.
Adam noted that the majority of the Russian crypto traders are using Tether (USDT) to transfer money outside the country.
“Tether is frequently used by Russians to move money out of the country. It is used by these two exchanges, in particular, to provide crypto banking services to sanctioned Russian banks,” Adam Zarazinski, CEO of Inca Digital
The report also noted that top crypto exchange Binance also provides multiple options to Russian crypto traders to swap their local fiat currency into crypto assets, without KYC requirements.
Binance’s global head of sanctions, Chargi Poyraz, responded on this matter and confirmed that the KYC requirement is a mandatory thing for all customers and also reminded that Binance was the first exchange to follow EU sanctions against Russia.
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