The US Department of the Treasury and the US Department of Justice have added the address of crypto exchange Chatex, which they associate with ransomware activities, to their sanctions list.
In addition, IZIBITS OU, Chatextech SIA and Hightrade Finance Ltd., affiliated with the education platform IZIBITS OU, have also been blacklisted by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). Authorities said in a statement:
"Chatex, which claims to have a presence in multiple countries, has facilitated transactions for multiple ransomware variants. Analysis of Chatex’s known transactions indicate that over half are directly traced to illicit or high-risk activities such as darknet markets, high-risk exchanges, and ransomware."
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Chatex has been linked to Suex, a Russian exchanger that was sanctioned by the United States in September. The founder of both exchanges is Egor Petukhovsky, who previously announced his departure from Chatex. Russian Yevgeniy Polyanin and Ukrainian Yaroslav Vasinskyi, accused of collaborating with organized extortion groups, have also been targeted by the sanctions. Representatives of the analytics company Chainalysis said:
"Chatex has received at least $77.5 million in Bitcoins since it began operating in September 2018, including more than $17 million in criminal assets, including darkweb marketplaces (mainly Hydra), fraud (mainly Finico and QubitTech.ai), as well as various types of data hijacking."