- Ex-Interior Ministry official Satyukov is still on the run.
- Officials say he took bribes worth $217 million in Bitcoin and Ethereum.
- Prosecutors look to seize millions of dollars' worth of cash, cars, and property.
The Russian prosecution service wants to seize a laundry list of luxury assets from a missing secret service official accused of accepting millions of dollars in Bitcoin and Ethereum bribes from the operators of the now-defunct WEX crypto exchange.
Prosecutors say former Ministry of Internal Affairs employee Georgy Satyukov took bribes worth $184 million in Bitcoin and $30 million in Ethereum between March and October 2021.
Investigators have identified $29.6 million worth of assets linked to Satyukov’s alleged bribes, the Russian newspaper Kommersant reported.
The bribe allegedly originated from Alexey Ivanov, a former system administrator at the WEX exchange, who asked Satyukov to help shield him from a criminal prosecution probe.
Satyukov and his former colleague at the ministry, Dmitry Sokolov, are reportedly on the run. Police believe they have left Russia, but Moscow courts are preparing to try the duo in absentia.
If prosecutors secure a conviction, they could greenlight the transfer of millions of dollars’ worth of their assets to the Russian Treasury.
WEX took over the operations of the BTC-e exchange in 2017.
The latter, a popular crypto exchange among Russian traders, had previously collapsed after its founder, Alexander Vinnik, was arrested in Greece on fraud and money-laundering charges. WEX went out of business in 2018.
13 apartments
Since WEX’s collapse, Sayukov established a property empire with his ill-got funds, say authorities.
Prosecution officials said they believed Satyukov sold much of his crypto holdings and used the money to “buy 13 apartments [in Russia], several non-residential properties in St. Petersburg, and a villa in the UAE.”
They also claimed he had bought a $1 million property in the Russian city of Saratov and registered it in his brother’s name.
Investigators also found two Porsche Cayenne Turbo cars registered in Satyukov’s name, all purchased after 2021. In addition, they discovered seven Patek Philippe watches, an ST Dupont Paris watch, and other jewellery with a combined value of over $1.3 million.
Additional searches of Satyukov’s bank accounts, and those of his immediate family, unearthed cash reserves of $540,000, as well as $38,500 in euros, and $14.2 million in Russian rubles.
The newspaper explained that Satyukov began working at the ministry in 2001. Between 2019 and 2021, he headed a top-secret department codenamed “K.”
The department, Kommersant wrote last year, is “one of the ministry’s most secret divisions” and tackles financial fraud cases.
Prosecutors say that during his time as a Ministry of Internal Affairs employee, Satyukov’s salary would have earned him a total of $126,165.
Tim Alper is a news correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email at tdalper@dlnews.com.
