Ukraine has been receiving crypto wallet addresses connected to Russian politicians in the wake of an effort to find and blacklist them, CoinDesk reported Tuesday (March 1).
According to private lawyer Artem Afian, who has been entrusted with the responsibility, the idea was that “the war criminals will try to avoid sanction through crypto, and we want to get them there.”
The Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, Mykhailo Fedorov, had asked for the information a few days ago. Fedorov tweeted a call for information for crypto wallets held by Russian and Belarusian politicians.
Ukrainian crypto community is ready to provide a generous reward for any information about crypto-wallets of Russian and Belarusian politicians and their surroundings. War crimes must be pursued and punished! To share info please contact in Telegram: https://t.co/XHidwUQ8bE.
— Mykhailo Fedorov (@FedorovMykhailo) February 26, 2022
Now, the report said, there’s an effort to blacklist those politicians, according to Afian, who spoke from an undisclosed location and said he was worried about his parents in the war. He said there had only been a few officials identified, but hoped that, after double checking all the wallets, they would get more of them.
Afian said an important part of the blacklist is helping all crypto exchanges “tag these politicians, their families, partners, children.”
Meanwhile, Coinbase has continued to block accounts and transactions from Russian clients who were targeted by sanctions — though it hasn’t banned all users from the country, according to a Reuters report Tuesday.
“At this time, we will not institute a blanket ban on all Coinbase transactions involving Russian addresses,” a Coinbase spokesperson said.
Binance, the biggest crypto exchange in the world, also didn’t want to commit to freezing every Russian account, in spite of Ukraine requesting such a thing. Western countries, including the U.S. and the U.K., have imposed huge sanctions financially on Russia over the war in Ukraine.
There are several major banks that have been shut out of the SWIFT international payments system, and the trading volume between the Russian rouble and the Tether cryptocurrency have seen a surge. That means there’s likely a lot of interest in crypto among Russians due to the sanctions.
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