Mykhailo L., a 28-year-old Ukrainian whom French justice considers its main suspect in an investigation into the cryptocurrency exchange platform Bitzlato, was released at the end of September, Agence France-Presse (AFP) learned from a source. close. to the matter on Saturday, October 12. Paris accuses the platform of having laundered criminal assets until early 2023. According to the same source, the Paris Court of Appeal placed this man under judicial supervision on September 24.
In January 2023, Washington and Paris jointly announced an international search with the arrest of Anatoli Legkodimov, Russian founder and main shareholder of Bitzlato, one man in Portugal, one in Cyprus and three others in Spain, including Mykhailo L. Twenty million euros of criminal offenses. Assets had also been seized. The Paris prosecutor’s office then presented Bitzlato as a platform that allowed “fast conversion of cryptoassets (…) in rubles » in order to “launder funds obtained through illegal activities (scams, sales on dark web markets) [la partie obscure du Web non référencée par les moteurs de recherche] and ransomware…) ».
According to elements of the investigation obtained by AFP, the investigation into this platform founded in 2017 by four Russian shareholders, including Legkodimov, and hosted on French servers, began thanks to police intelligence services. Investigators quickly suspected that Bitzlato was aiding the trade “in a short time” AND “anonymously” on a global scale of cryptocurrencies against rubles. According to the prosecution, the platform launched a system to verify the identity of its clients and the origin of their assets, but too late (in spring 2022) and incompletely.
At least five people charged
In a January 2023 report, Chainalysis, a specialist in the study of cryptocurrency transactions, estimated that 26% of Bitzlato’s financial flow since 2019 was linked to crypto assets directly linked to illicit activities, representing $650 million. This analysis is questioned by another source close to the file consulted by AFP. American justice has affirmed that Bitzlato carried out most of his transactions with “Hydra Market”defunct sales platform for “dark web”judicially closed.
Bitzlato is thus associated with drug trafficking, the financing of the Russian invasion of Ukraine or, on the French side, with fraud in the partial compensation system for activities linked to the Covid-19 epidemic. Were its leaders aware of this? Yes, according to some of the 500,000 messages found in the “The most important thing”internal messaging. Legkodimov and his main partner, both Russians and who have so far escaped French justice, would have expressed their knowledge of the dubious origin of a part of the company’s turnover in 2018-2019. They even mentioned the possibility of charging a 3% commission for these suspicious transactions, compared to the usual 0.5% in others.
What about Mykhailo L.? Upon arrival in France from Spain in March 2023, he initially minimized his responsibility and questioned any infringement, claiming that his authority was limited only to the marketing sector. Other interviewees, on the contrary, presented him as the general director, that is, a “essential element” of the Bitzlato device, with a “power of decision” and knowledge of control deficiencies. Legkodimov, on parole since July 2024 after eighteen months of detention and a guilty plea for money laundering in New York, thus rejected, before the French investigating judges in February, against Mykhailo L., a good part of the errors of Bitzlato in user control. To date, at least five people are charged in France.
Mykhailo L.’s lawyer contacted by AFP, Beryl Brown, stated that ” relief “ after this release. “These are files in which the question of the responsibility of these employees of Internet platforms (cryptocurrencies or even messaging) in the use that organized crime makes of them will always arise. For my part, I consider that there is no evidence of his involvement.”he added. The lawyer of another accused, Frédéric Belot, is worried: “Won’t French justice encounter satirists who know nothing about it, while Mr. Legkodimov has been released in the United States? »
