The European Union police agency (Europol) said it had arrested five top executives from the sanctioned Bitzlato exchange.
The EU agency said January 23 that among the people arrested are the general director, the financial director and the marketing director in Spain.
The arrest followed eight house searches in Spain, Cyprus, Portugal and the US.
In the course of the house search, Europol said it seized around 18 million euros ($19.5 million) worth of cryptocurrency and froze more than 100 cryptocurrency accounts with assets worth around 50 million euros ($54.3 million). of dollars).
Europol added that Bitzlato facilitated the laundering of various crypto assets, including 119 Bitcoin worth €2.1 billion.
A subsequent analysis by Europol revealed that around 46% of the assets exchanged through Bitzlato, worth around €1 billion ($1.08 billion), had links to criminal activities.
On January 18, the founder of Bitzlato, Anatoly Legkodymov, was stopped by US authorities for running a money transfer business. In addition, Binance, the leading cryptocurrency exchange, was named in the top three bowl of Bitzlato’s illegal funds.
