The United States announced sanctions against a Russian woman for helping “oligarchs”

A Russian woman was sanctioned for helping to withdraw funds from RUSSIA, including using cryptocurrency, says the US Treasury Department . Russia has repeatedly indicated that it considers American sanctions illegal US Treasury building

The US Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed sanctions against Russian citizen Ekaterina Zhdanova, who was suspected of money laundering and assisting in circumventing sanctions using virtual currency. This is reported on the department's website.

“Through key proxies like Zhdanova, Russian elites, ransomware groups, and other rogue actors have attempted to evade U.S. and international sanctions, particularly through the abuse of virtual currency,” said the U.S. Treasury Under Secretary for Counterterrorism. and financial intelligence Brian Nelson.

In particular, according to the ministry, in March 2022, Zhdanova helped an unnamed Russian client conceal the source of his wealth and withdraw more than $2.3 million to Western Europe through a fraudulently opened investment account and the purchase of real estate. To conduct large cross-border transactions, the Russian woman used, in particular, cryptocurrencies.

According to the Ministry of Finance, Zhdanova makes transfers “on behalf of oligarchs who moved abroad.” One of them found her to withdraw more than $100 million to the UAE. In addition, the Russian citizen helped Russian clients obtain tax residency in this country, an ID card and open a bank account. Payments, the department believes, were to be made in cash or virtual currency and transferred to a bank account in Dubai, and then transferred from there to foreign bank accounts at the client’s discretion. “The advantage of this service was to create for the client a source of origin of funds that could be managed from anywhere in the world without additional questions from the authorities,” the ministry explained.

Russian authorities consider Western sanctions illegal. “No sanctions, even the most stringent ones, have ever in any part of the world led to those countries against whom they were imposed somehow changing their position,” emphasized Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov . President Vladimir Putin called the restrictions “crazy and thoughtless” and also said that the number of restrictive measures and the speed with which they were introduced were unprecedented. However, according to him, the West's calculation of destroying the Russian economy did not come true. 

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