Detectives of the Bureau of Economic Security of Ukraine exposed a group of persons who illegally transferred electronic money from the sanctioned payment system Webmoney Transfer to cash and non-cash funds. About this reported Bureau of Economic Security.
According to law enforcement officers, the members of the criminal group carried out all financial operations without the necessary license of the National Bank of Ukraine, which is a gross violation of the current legislation. In particular, they conducted transactions with Russian rubles, which additionally violated sanctions restrictions.
The criminal scheme consisted in placing applications for the purchase, sale and withdrawal of electronic funds on one of the Russian websites. While receiving payments from other persons, the suspects transferred money from their own electronic wallets to customer accounts.
The total amount of illegal transactions reached tens of millions of hryvnias.
As part of the investigation, BEB detectives conducted 14 searches in various regions of Ukraine, in particular in the Ternopil, Lviv, Rivne, Volyn, Ivano-Frankivsk, Poltava, Sumy, Cherkasy, Vinnytsia, and Zaporizhia regions.
Based on the results of the investigation, 12 persons were charged with suspicion under Part 1 of Article 200 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, which refers to illegal transactions with documents, payment cards and electronic money.
The pre-trial investigation continues on the grounds of crimes provided for by parts 1 and 2 of article 200, part 3 of article 209 (legalization of proceeds obtained through crime) and part 3 of article 212 (tax evasion) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.
Currently, investigators are also checking the possibility of using this scheme to finance Russian agents on the territory of Ukraine, which may indicate an even greater threat to the security of the state.
We will remind that in 2018, Ukraine introduced sanctions against the Webmoney payment system, banning its activity for three years. Sanctions include freezing assets, temporarily restricting the right to use and dispose of property, restricting trade operations and prohibiting the transfer of capital abroad.
The investigation continues, and law enforcement officers do not rule out that the circle of suspects may expand due to the discovery of new evidence indicating a large-scale financial conspiracy.
