A court in the Kyzylorda Region has sentenced the organizers of an illegal cryptocurrency exchange who were also involved in laundering criminal proceeds, the website infohub.kz reports, citing the Financial Monitoring Agency.
According to the Financial Monitoring Agency's official Telegram channel, investigators established that the convicted individuals traded cryptocurrency illegally through Binance's P2P platform outside the trading venues of the Astana International Financial Centre without the required permit.
As a result, digital assets worth more than 1 billion tenge were sold, and income from the illegal crypto exchange amounted to 178 million tenge.
In addition, one of the convicted individuals laundered money obtained from drug sales. Dropers who provided their bank accounts were recruited to receive and transfer the funds. The total amount of such transfers exceeded 600 million tenge.
The proceeds were converted into cryptocurrency and transferred to drug dealers' wallets. The total volume of identified transfers amounted to 277,000 USDT.
The convicted individuals used the criminal proceeds to buy trucks and trailers, registering them in the names of close relatives. The vehicles were subsequently used in commercial activity and leased to legal entities.
The court sentenced them to 3 and 2 years of restricted freedom. Four pieces of special equipment and criminal proceeds worth more than 1 billion tenge were confiscated to the state. The verdict has entered into legal force.