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US prosecutors have charged a cryptocurrency entrepreneur with sanctions evasion and export control violations, alleging he laundered more than $500mn and helped Russians acquire sensitive US technology.
Iurii Gugnin, founder of Florida-incorporated payments company Evita Pay and a Delaware company called Evita Investments, was charged on Monday with wire and bank fraud, money laundering and other offences, according to court documents unsealed in federal court in Brooklyn. He was arrested and arraigned in New York, the Department of Justice said.
Prosecutors said Gugnin made payments on behalf of foreign customers for US electronics that included an American-designed server subject to export controls, and for parts for Rosatom, Russia’s state-owned nuclear technology company.
“Gugnin came to the United States and set up a money-laundering operation under the guise of a cryptocurrency start-up, which he then used to evade sanctions and export controls and defraud US financial institutions,” US attorney Joseph Nocella said in a statement.
John Eisenberg, assistant attorney-general for national security at the justice department, accused Gugnin of “turning a cryptocurrency company into a covert pipeline for dirty money”.
In a letter to a New York judge on Monday, prosecutors said Gugnin had “connections with government officials in Russia and Iran who could help facilitate his flight from prosecution, including members of Russia’s intelligence services”. He faces 22 counts, some with maximum sentences of 30 years in prison, the letter said.
A representative for Gugnin, 38, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
According to the indictment Gugnin, also known as Iurii Mashukov and George Goognin, was living in the US on an O-1A visa, which is for people with an “extraordinary ability or achievement”. It said he had moved to New York in 2022 and “portrayed himself as a serial entrepreneur”.
Prosecutors allege he facilitated nearly $2bn of transactions, and that many of his customers were in Russia and held funds in sanctioned Russian banks. Other customers were in China and the United Arab Emirates.
About $365mn of the roughly $530mn in funds that he moved through the US system originated in Tether, they allege, and the vast majority of those transactions were associated with Evita Investments rather than Evita Pay.
The indictment said customers provided Gugnin’s companies with crypto, which he laundered through cryptocurrency wallets and US bank accounts, converting the funds into US dollars or other currencies and then made payments on behalf of his customers. It says clients used him to make payments for artwork and to a French yacht company.
It says he facilitated payments for Yiwu Vortex Import and Export Co Limited, a Hong Kong-based distributor that the US placed sanctions on last year, accusing it of illicitly exporting maritime equipment to Russia.
The court documents describe a transaction in which a South Korean group agreed to provide a Moscow-based entity with parts and equipment which it then supplied to Rosatom, Russia’s state-owned nuclear group.
The filings also say he facilitated a Russian customer’s purchase of a rack server manufactured by a US tech company at a time when it was unlawful to export the technology to Russia without a licence.
