Operatives said to be behind a billion-dollar Russian money-laundering network – used by drug dealers, financial criminals and foreign spies – have been sanctioned and arrested in a coordinated international investigation led by the National Crime Agency.
The UK law enforcement body, which tackles serious and organised crime, said the actions constituted the “most significant money laundering operation” it had undertaken in the past few years. The operation involved America’s Federal Bureau of Investigation, France’s Direction Centrale de la Police Judiciaire and Ireland’s Garda.
The networks are said to have laundered cash and cryptocurrencies for serious and organised crime gangs in the UK and across the west; Russian hacking groups, which extract ransom payments from corporations after disabling their computer networks; as well as “Russian elites seeking to bypass sanctions”, including in the UK.
The agency added that the scheme had serious real-life implications, as it was directly linked to laundering drug money made on the streets of the UK.
In total, Operation Destabilise identified the alleged heads of the laundering networks and resulted in the arrest of 84 people plus the seizing of more than £20m in cash and cryptocurrency, the NCA said.
It was unveiled as the US Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) announced sanctions against a series of Russian-speaking men and women heading the money laundering network.
Rob Jones, the NCA’s director general of operations, said: “Operation Destabilise has exposed billion-dollar money laundering networks operating in a way previously unknown to international law enforcement or regulators.
“For the first time, we have been able to map out a link between Russian elites, crypto-rich cyber criminals, and drugs gangs on the streets of the UK. The thread that tied them together – the combined force of [alleged money laundering groups] Smart and TGR – was invisible until now.”
The NCA said that Ekaterina Zhdanova, who was sanctioned last year by OFAC for allegedly helping ransomware groups receive and launder illicit funds, headed Smart. She is said to have worked alongside the TGR boss, George Rossi, whose location is unknown to the international law enforcement coalition. Rossi’s second-in-command is Elena Chirkinyan.
The NCA outlined how Smart and TGR laundered cash for transnational crime groups such as the Kinahans, the family-run crime syndicate said to be responsible for trafficking drugs and firearms into the UK and internationally, who were sanctioned by the US in 2022.
From late 2022 to summer 2023, the Smart network was used to fund unspecified Russian espionage operations, the NCA said, while the money launderers also helped Russian clients avoid UK sanctions.
Connections to funds being moved into the UK that originated from the Russia Today (RT) television network were also unearthed by the investigators. RT’s owner is sanctioned in the UK.
The money-laundering scheme is said to have worked by passing funds through a sequence of layers. Russian criminals would exchange millions in cryptocurrencies – made from running a series of ransomware attacks – for cash derived from a range of illicit transactions in western economies, including UK drug deals.
This gave the Russian criminals hard currency that could be laundered and the value returned to them. It also handed western crime bosses millions in cryptocurrency, allowing them to buy large consignments of drugs from South America while bypassing the international banking system.
The NCA added: “TGR and Smart coordinated their activity, with members of the TGR group receiving large volumes of cash on behalf of Zhdanova and facilitating the conversion, making the equivalent value available in cryptocurrency.
“One cash courier network investigated conducted cash handovers in 55 different locations across England, Scotland, Wales and the Channel Islands, over a four-month period. They did so on behalf of at least 22 suspected criminal groups operating in the UK.”
Asked if the actions would close the network – or if key money launderers would simply be replaced – the NCA’s Jones added: “Of course, there is always somebody in the wings. We really understand this system now. As people fill this void we’ll get after them.”
