International law enforcement agencies have successfully seized the website of cryptocurrency exchange Garantex (“garantex[.]org”), approximately three years after the platform was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in April 2022.

A seizure banner now displayed on the website states: “The domain for Garantex has been seized by the United States Secret Service pursuant to a seizure warrant obtained by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia under the authority of 18 U.S.C. §§ 981 and 982.”

This coordinated operation involved multiple agencies including the U.S. Department of Justice’s Criminal Division, FBI, Europol, Dutch National Police, German Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt), Frankfurt General Prosecutor’s Office, Finnish National Bureau of Investigation, and Estonian National Criminal Police.

Garantex, established in 2019, had previously faced U.S. sanctions for enabling transactions from darknet markets and illicit actors, including Hydra and Conti. In late 2023, Russian national Ekaterina Zhdanova was sanctioned for laundering ransomware proceeds from groups like Ryuk through the exchange.

The seizure follows recent European Union sanctions against Garantex due to its connections with sanctioned Russian banks including Sberbank, T-Bank, and Alfa-Bank. These sanctions prompted Tether to block Garantex’s crypto wallets.

Before the seizure, Garantex had posted on Telegram: “Dear users! We have bad news. Tether has entered the war against the Russian crypto market and blocked our wallets worth more than 2.5 billion rubles. We are temporarily suspending all services, including cryptocurrency withdrawals, while our entire team solves this problem. We are fighting and will not give up!”

The Moscow-based exchange subsequently published a list of its cryptocurrency wallets that Tether had blocked.