- Japan added Garantex to its asset-freeze list on October 2.
- The exchange was already under U.S., UK and EU sanctions.
- Its customers moved to a successor platform called Grinex.
- The ruble-backed A7A5 token now carries most of that activity.
Japan added Garantex Europe OU to its asset-freeze list on October 2, 2026, inside a sanctions package over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that covers 33 organizations and nine individuals. The Russian-run exchange was already sanctioned by the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union, and its servers were seized in March 2025. Most of its business has since moved to a successor called Grinex and to A7A5, a ruble-backed token that FinCEN ties to at least $179.1 billion in transactions.
Tokyo’s freeze arrives with curbs on 35 shadow-fleet vessels
The measures were issued under Japan’s Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Act, which makes payments and capital transactions with designated parties subject to government permission. Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs identifies Garantex by addresses in Moscow’s Federation Tower and in St. Petersburg. The same package restricts 35 vessels tied to Russia’s shadow fleet, and places export controls on four companies in Turkey and the UAE.
Daily wallet rotation blunted the 2022 U.S. sanctions
Garantex was founded in late 2019 and registered in Estonia while its staff worked from Moscow. Estonia’s Financial Intelligence Unit inspected the company in December 2021 and found identity-verification failures affecting more than 90% of customers. Garantex surrendered its licence, which lapsed on February 24, 2022, the day Russian forces crossed into Ukraine.
The U.S. Treasury sanctioned Garantex on April 5, 2022, together with the darknet marketplace Hydra, after tracing more than $100 million in its transactions to illicit actors. A designation of this kind works through screening. American exchanges and banks check transfers against wallet addresses attributed to the sanctioned entity and block any match. U.S. prosecutors allege that Garantex responded by changing its operational wallet addresses every day, which left compliance teams working from lists that were already out of date.
The exchange grew. The Justice Department says Garantex processed at least $96 billion in cryptocurrency transactions between April 2019 and March 2025. That figure is total volume, and prosecutors put the criminal share at hundreds of millions of dollars. TRM Labs attributes to Garantex more than 70% of the crypto volume that reached sanctioned entities and jurisdictions after its designation.
Tether’s freeze reached an exchange no Western court could close
Brussels named Garantex in the EU’s 16th sanctions package on February 24, 2025, calling it the first Russia-based crypto exchange on its list. Ten days later, U.S., German and Finnish authorities seized three Garantex domains and the servers behind them, and froze more than $26 million.
Garantex said Tether had blocked wallets holding over 2.5 billion rubles in USDT, then worth about $28 million. A stablecoin issuer can freeze balances at any address on its own contract, wherever the holder is based. Garantex suspended services. On March 7 the Justice Department unsealed a money laundering conspiracy indictment against technical administrator Aleksej Besciokov, later arrested in India, and co-founder Aleksandr Mira Serda.
Grinex was incorporated three months before the raid
Garantex staff moved customers and funds to Grinex, which the U.S. Treasury calls its successor. TRM Labs found that Grinex had been incorporated in Kyrgyzstan in December 2024, which suggests the fallback was prepared in advance. The UK’s sanctions office reported nearly identical interfaces on the two platforms and said Garantex customers recovered frozen balances through Grinex. Analytics firm Global Ledger found that by May 2025 the new exchange had handled more than $1.2 billion in USDT flows.
The transfer ran through A7A5, a ruble-backed token issued by the Kyrgyz company Old Vector. According to Treasury, customers who lost access to Garantex balances were credited equivalent amounts of A7A5. The token belongs to the A7 settlement network, which Treasury links to Promsvyazbank, a lender to Russia’s defense sector, and to the sanctioned Moldovan oligarch Ilan Shor.
A third of A7A5’s reported volume may be wash trading
FinCEN counted more than 180 entities processing A7A5 between February 2025 and June 2026, with almost all of the volume passing through sanctioned platforms such as Garantex and Grinex. These are gross numbers. TRM estimates that around 34% of A7A5 trading volume may have been wash trading, meaning the same funds passing back and forth between related wallets.
Washington’s second designation in August 2025 followed the money beyond the exchange. OFAC re-listed Garantex and added Grinex, A7 and Old Vector. It also named Exved, a platform for crypto-settled trade with Russia tied to co-founder Sergey Mendeleev. Britain sanctioned the A7 network again in May 2026, citing its own claim of moving more than $90 billion in a year.
Japan freezes Garantex but not the exchange that replaced it
For Japan’s licensed exchanges and banks, any dealing with Garantex Europe OU now needs government permission. Direct exposure is probably small, since the entity lost its domains and servers more than 18 months ago.
The harder question is how much a list of named companies still captures. FinCEN reports that after an alleged hack of Grinex in April 2026, A7A5 activity consolidated in unhosted wallets, which the agency reads as a possible sign that the A7 network is reducing its reliance on exchanges already under sanctions.
Garantex is the last of the 33 organizations on Tokyo’s list and the only crypto business among them, listed after defense plants and drone makers. Grinex and Old Vector, which Washington and London designated in 2025, do not appear. The next data point will be whether Japan extends the freeze to those Kyrgyz entities in a later package.