Prosecutor General Ivan Geshev before the Committee on Legal Affairs of the Parliament: Russian transactions in Nexo have circumvented the sanctions

20 January 2023

"Russian transactions in Nexo have circumvented sanctions. Transactions from the Russian cryptocurrency exchange "Garantex" were categorically established, after the sanctions imposed from April 5, 2022 until the end of 2022 - 23 direct transactions to Nexo addresses". This was stated by the Prosecutor General Ivan Geshev during a hearing at the Committee on Legal Affairs of the Parliament, which was held on 19.01.2023.

"There is information concerning coordination between Nexo and Iranian terrorist organizations, transactions of Nexo to various Iranian cryptocurrency trading exchanges have been detected," the Prosecutor General said. He informed the MPs that there were also 2 direct Nexo transactions to an account of the cryptocurrency trading exchange "Binance" belonging to the person Mahmoud Mohammed Mahmoud Ayesh. "The same person was suspected of financing terrorist activity for the benefit of the Hamas organization, which is declared terrorist by our partners such as Germany and many others," he added.

Before the deputies the Prosecutor General pointed out that " by using specialized tools for the analysis of crypto-asset transactions, numerous incoming, outgoing, direct and indirect transactions to addresses with an extremely high degree of risk have been identified. This is a large-scale investigation in the interest of EU and our Euro-Atlantic partners, which is just beginning."

To allegations that the prosecution's action against Nexo is targeted, Ivan Geshev replied that he did not understand "what would be the target 8 American prosecutors and colleagues from other partner services. We are doing our work, everyone from the EU and our partners", he was categorical. "You know that Bulgaria works with our international partners, you know that this all started in the USA. You know about the New York State Attorney General Letitia James. I will contact her in the coming days and inform her of the results of our investigation. Since the crime is of a cross-border nature, we rely on the relevant competent assistance from our partners," the Prosecutor General said.

In response to a question from a member of parliament regarding the Nexo case and the publicly released information regarding the financing of a Bulgarian political party by the cryptobank, the Prosecutor General pointed out that there is no law on lobbying in our country and the Prosecutor's Office has no powers in this area.

"Unfortunately, I have to note that, unlike the USA, the law on lobbying has repeatedly not been adopted in Bulgaria. I can only guess for what reasons. I am sure that such a law will lead to success, but we currently do not have right to such an investigation," explained Geshev.