While the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been going on for about three months now, the world’s largest crypto exchange, Binance, decided to block the user accounts of some high-ranking Russians. The exchange recently announced that it has suspended the user accounts of some relatives of Russian statesmen.
Binance exchange excludes Kremlin relatives
Bloomberg reports that this has already taken place during the past two months. Family members of Kremlin officials were systematically tracked down and access to their Binance account was terminated. The stepdaughter of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the daughter of Putin’s mouthpiece, Dmitry Peskov, are no longer welcome at Binance, among others. Relatives of some prominent Russian oligarchs have also been banned from Binance.
According to Binance’s Head of Sanctions, Cahgri Payraz, the exchange is continuously tracking sanctioned Russians who are attempting to exploit the crypto exchange under the radar. According to him, it is important that Binance does this to prevent financial crimes from being committed using the platform in the future.
“What’s different is that our compliance screen operations are ‘proactive’, aimed at detecting and deterring financial crime risks before taking any regulatory or legal action against these individuals or entities.”
Sanctions enforced by crypto companies
Binance previously announced that they were going to take measures that only applied to Russian users. For example, Russian users with more than $10,000 stationed on Binance were denied access to most services. From that moment on, these users could only withdraw their money.
These actions were encouraged by governments and regulators. The fear was often that sanctioned Russians could easily get out of sanctions through the crypto industry. However, the crypto community does not seem to like these actions. They argue that the crypto industry should transcend borders and that governments should not be able to exercise power.