Russia sanctions British teenager over crypto laundering report

Russia has sanctioned a 17-year-old British schoolboy after he published a report exposing the country’s sanctions evasion which was partially enabled by Kyrgyzstani firms.

Reuters reported yesterday that Alexander Browder was sanctioned and barred, alongside four other British nationals, from entering Russia.

Russia’s foreign ministry claimed the sanction was warranted due to the “provocative anti-Russian rhetoric of British officials, ​the spread of insinuations about Russia, and ​London’s practical steps to supply the Kyiv regime with weapons.”

Roughly three months prior, Browder submitted a 46-page report to the Henry Jackson Society think tank detailing the scale of cryptocurrency money laundering within Russia.  

His report was based on the findings of his own Global Cryptocurrency Laundering Database, a trove of data that reveals how cryptocurrency has been used to launder $350 billion in illicit funds across 164 cases between 2005 and 2025. 

Browder discovered he had been sanctioned while at school. 

He told the BBC, “No one said anything to me,” adding “I was sat in my economics class and I saw my name on the front page of Reuters saying that I was sanctioned.” 

Read more: UK sanctions HTX for alleged Russian sanctions violations

He said, “For Russia [crypto laundering] is one of the key ways that they’re generating revenue to sustain their war of aggression, and so I’ve spent the last year and a half taking it down.”

Browder’s work covers Russia’s reliance on the Kyrgyzstan-based stablecoin A7A5, how four of the five major ransomware groups are based in the country, and the entire network moving money crypto to Russia’s benefit. 

The report has been influential enough to spur 26 UK politicians to call for the country’s foreign secretary to sanction various Kyrgyzstani enablers of the network.

One month later, the UK implemented a series of UK sanctions against Russia that targeted the A7A5 network. 

This included the sanctioning of Justin Sun’s Huobi Global, a crypto exchange that later rebranded to HTX, for its alleged interactions with the Russian crypto exchange Garantex.  

Read more: Crypto has become Kim Jong-Un’s lifeline — and Russia’s secret weapon

Alongside Browder, Reuters reported that Washington Post journalist Catherine Belton, Committed to ​Good Chief Executive Alice Laugher, i Paper reporter Richard Holmes, and Chelsea Group Chairman Richard Westbury were all sanctioned by Russia. 

The CEO of stablecoin firm A7, recently told Reuters that the firm is planning to expand its operations globally.

Ilan Shor said, “A7 plans to ​operate everywhere,” and claims that the sanctions, which he describes as “illegally imposed,” will be “lifted at some point.”

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