WASHINGTON—The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) has announced a new round of sanctions targeting over-the-counter crypto exchange Suex.
Formally registered in Prague, but with physical offices in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia, government officials said Suex has facilitated cash-outs from ransomware gangs, scam operators, and defunct crypto exchange BTC-e, which the U.S. Department of Justice shut down years ago.
Crypto analytics firm Chainalysis aided OFAC in its investigation of Suex. Chainalysis found that Suex had received over $160 million in Bitcoin in the past three years. Those funds also included deposits from darknet markets, in particular Russia-based Hydra, which is likely the largest of its kind in the world, The Block reported.
“The way to disrupt ransomware is by going after the ransomware supply chain,” Gurvais Grigg of Chainalysis told The Block. “We’ve been looking at Suex for a while. But it takes time for entities like Treasury and OFAC to make their business case.”