Individuals who organized illegal cryptocurrency exchange and laundered criminal proceeds in the Kyzylorda Region have been convicted, the Financial Monitoring Agency reported. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing Sputnik Kazakhstan.
During the investigation, it was established that they illegally traded cryptocurrency without proper authorization, outside the trading platforms of the Astana International Financial Centre, through the P2P service of the Binance platform. Thus, they sold digital assets worth more than 1 billion tenge. Income from illegal cryptocurrency exchange reached 178 million tenge, according to the statement.
In addition, one of the convicted was engaged in laundering money from drug sales. To receive money and transfer it to other accounts, they involved individuals who provided their bank accounts (droppers). More than 600 million tenge was transferred through these accounts.
"The received money was exchanged for cryptocurrency and sent to drug dealers' crypto wallets. The total volume of such transfers established by the investigation reached 277 thousand USDT," the agency's specialists said.
With the criminally obtained money, the convicted bought trucks and trailers, registering them in the names of close relatives. Later, these vehicles were used for business purposes and rented out to legal entities.
By court verdict, one of them was sentenced to three years of restricted freedom, the other to two years. Also, four pieces of special equipment and criminally obtained income worth more than 1 billion tenge were confiscated to the state's benefit. The verdict has entered into legal force.