1 August 2026
Crypto Executive Of WEX Got Arrested In Italy
WEX was the cryptocurrency exchange which stopped its operations last year and now its CEO has been arrested in Italy reported by Russian BBC. This news was informed to BBC by two anonymous investors of exchange. However, the two big bodies- the Russian Embassy and the Guardia de Finanza is not ready to share any reports related to the matter. After BTC-e, WEX was the successor of the same. BTC-e was a cryptocurrency exchange which came under the regulatory scrutiny back in 2017 for allegedly willfully violating Anti-Money Laundering (AML) laws. Alexander Vinnik was one of the operators of BTC-e got arrested in Greece in 2017 and now been extraditing to Russia, France, and the United States. WEX was launched in 2017 by Vasilev and it carried its operations for one year where it credited customers with lost funds- 60% in original currencies and 40% in debt tokens. Slowly problems started to appear and exchange stopped its withdrawals in last year July. As a result, the owner of the exchange Vasilev sold the exchange to Dmitri Khavchenko who is a Ukrainian militia fighter and then made his daughter Daria as the owner of the WEX. Last year Khavchenko shared in the interview with CoinDesk that the administrator of WEX ran away with the keys as he didn’t like him. In that period $19 million worth of ether was moved from the cold wallet of WEX to Binance. Later, the CEO of Binance Changpeng Zhao tweets that WEX accounts have been frozen. However, the real identities behind the BTC-e are still unknown. According to American authorities, Vinnik is the owner of BTC-e but he denies and claims to be a technical specialist. Now the report states that WEX is used by Faramarz Shahi Savandi and Mohammad Mehdi Shah Mansouri – the people believed to be behind the SamSam ransomware – for laundering more than $6 million obtained in ransom payments. The important thing is that investors of exchange are asking for justice and has written a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin. This open letter has been shared with Russian police headquarters.Explore related on CoinsCapture
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