The Basmanny Court of Moscow has issued a guilty verdict in the high-profile case of the theft of funds from the Garantex cryptocurrency exchange. Three former Moscow police officers have been found guilty of a series of serious crimes and sentenced to actual prison terms — from 12 to 14 years in a penal colony. It was established that the criminals, using forged court decisions, withdrew more than 30 million rubles from the platform.
The harshest punishment — 14 years — was handed down to former Lieutenant Colonel Renat Bakhtiev from the Bureau of Special Technical Measures. His accomplices, investigator Antonina Shakina and operative Leonid Golubev, each received 12 years of imprisonment. The court also stripped all three of their special ranks — lieutenant colonel, major, and police captain, respectively — and imposed a fine of 6.5 million rubles on each.
The Mechanics of the Crime
The scheme was refined back in the spring of 2023 after a statement from St. Petersburg resident Alexander Sazonov, who discovered an attempt to unauthorizedly debit 24.8 million rubles from his deposit account on Garantex. During the investigation, an entire criminal chain was uncovered. First, a forged order to seize the applicant's property, allegedly from a judge of the Basmanny Court, was sent to the exchange, followed by a fictitious document lifting the seizure, signed by investigator Shakina.
The criminals acted in a similar manner against other clients of the platform. Golubev, using an office computer, requested data from the exchange on account balances, after which Shakina opened criminal cases based on statements from straw persons. As a result, the investigation established their involvement in the theft of 6.2 million rubles from two other Garantex users — Mikhail Korniychuk and Agakerim Gamzabekov. The funds were cashed out through accomplice Lilia Elesheva, against whom charges were dropped due to the elimination of investigative deficiencies.
Context: The Exchange Under Double Pressure
This verdict is just one episode in a series of problems that have befallen Garantex. In August 2025, the U.S. Department of the Treasury expanded its sanctions list, adding three Russian citizens connected to the platform, as well as related projects — GRINEX, InDeFi SmartBank, Exved, and other entities. Notably, the sanctions did not halt the platform's operations: TRM Labs analysts recorded that after the seizure of servers, the exchange effectively relaunched under the Grinex brand with nearly identical code and interface.
According to Global Ledger, wallets in the Bitcoin and Ethereum networks totaling about $34 million are linked to Garantex, of which at least $25 million have already been paid out to former users. The funds passed through mixers like Tornado Cash and cross-chain bridges, complicating their tracking.
My comment: This case is a vivid illustration that even law enforcement officers, tasked with fighting crime, are not immune to the temptation of easy money in the unregulated crypto environment. However, a more alarming signal is the resilience of the exchange itself. The Garantex experience shows that sanctions and criminal cases only force such platforms to adapt, go into the shadows, and change their branding, but do not eliminate the very demand for illegal crypto services. The solution to the problem lies not in targeted repression, but in creating transparent and legal alternatives for cross-border settlements.