After the closure of Garantex, American authorities hoped to have cut off a major channel of circumvention of Russian sanctions. But the reality is much more stubborn. According to a report published by blockchain analysis firm Elliptic, five new crypto exchanges have taken over, often from the same offices, with the same networks.
In brief
- Elliptic has identified five crypto platforms linked to Russia that facilitate the circumvention of international sanctions.
- ABCeX, the most active, processed at least $11 billion from the same offices as Garantex in Moscow.
- Exmo, which claimed to have left Russia in 2022, still shares the same wallet infrastructure as its Russian subsidiary.
- Only Bitpapa was sanctioned among the five platforms identified.
A ghost network that is growing instead of disappearing
The Elliptic report, published this Saturday, comes like an electric shock. The blockchain analysis company reveals that five crypto exchange platforms, most of which are still unsanctioned, today allow Russian entities to happily circumvent Western financial restrictions.
The closure of Garantex in March 2025, after the seizure of its domain names by the American authorities, did not end the problem. She simply redistributed it. ABCeX, Exmo, Bitpapa, Rapira and Aifory Pro have, each in their own way, absorbed part of the illicit volume that Garantex was processing.
ABCeX is the most concerning. Indeed, this platform operates from the Federation Tower in Moscow, the same building that Garantex occupied. It would have processed at least $11 billion in cryptos, with significant flows to Garantex and Aifory Pro, another player in this network.
The case of Exmo is perhaps the most striking. The platform had officially announced its departure from the Russian market after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. However, blockchain analysis tells a completely different story: its Western and Russian entities share the same custody wallet infrastructure. As a result, Exmo conducted more than $19.5 million in direct transactions with sanctioned entities, including Garantex, Grinex and Chatex.
Increasingly sophisticated circumvention mechanisms
Each platform has developed its own techniques to stay under the radar. Bitpapa, the only one sanctioned by OFAC in March 2024, constantly changes its wallet address to escape surveillance systems. Approximately 9.7% of its outgoing flows went to sanctioned targets.
Rapira, a platform under Georgian law with an office in Moscow, carried out more than $72 million in direct transactions with Grinex, a platform under sanctions. The Russian authorities themselves reportedly searched its offices at the end of 2025, suspecting a flight of capital to Dubai.
As for Aifory Pro, its model is particularly daring. It offers virtual payment cards powered by USDT to allow Russian users to access blocked services like Airbnb or ChatGPT. The platform operates from Moscow, Dubai and Turkey, and reportedly transferred nearly $2 million to Abantether, an Iranian exchange platform.
The overall figures confirm this trend. Chainalysis reports that illicit crypto addresses received a record $154 billion in 2025. The ruble-pegged Russian stablecoin A7A5 alone reportedly accounted for $93.3 billion in transactions.
In short, the closure of Garantex did not put out the fire, it dispersed it. Faced with this observation, the European Union is now considering a general ban on all crypto transactions with Russia. A response that seems urgent, but whose effectiveness remains to be proven in the face of such an adaptable network.
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