Where does the River of Crypto Donations for Ukraine Flow?
There is reason to believe that Ukrainian recipients spend crypto donations by naive citizens at their own discretion, organizing an well-oiled crypto business [...]
With the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine, the authorities in Kyiv began to actively raise funds for the country’s defense. Foreign states responded to the call, as well as individuals and companies. Almost every European who sympathized with Ukraine started sending donations, and cryptocurrencies have become one of the most convenient means of doing this. The anonymity and ease of transactions of Bitcoin, Ethereum and other digital assets have made cryptocurrencies an ideal means for citizens of various countries willing to assist Ukraine. Four months later, Ukraine had already received more than $100 million sent in from all over the world. However, the government has not yet reported on how this money has been spent, and will hardly do this any time soon.
On March 2, 2023, the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) issued a nationwide ban on the withdrawal of money from crypto wallets. On July 31, 2023, the NBU sent out an internal letter to this effect to the country’s banks. Taking seriously the situation with the payment systems and operators of the cryptocurrency market, the regulator is collecting information about the transfers and transactions made through them.
Back in 2021, Ukraine tried to become a center of attraction for cryptocurrencies, with Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation Oleksiy Bornyakov saying: “We have a large talent pool in Ukraine and a strong community of blockchain developers. They picked up the cryptocurrency trend faster than people in many other countries, and most importantly, they understood how to build a business based on it.” Touted as it was, however, the “cryptocurrency trend” has actually become a “gray zone” for corruption and money laundering.
In 2022, President Volodymyr Zelensky tried to rectify the situation and signed the law “On virtual assets,” which was supposed to set the stage for the launch of a legal cryptocurrency market in Ukraine. The National Securities and Stock Market Commission became the regulator.
“The signing of this law by the president is another important step towards bringing the crypto sector out of the shadows and launching a legal market for virtual assets in Ukraine,” the Ministry of Digital Transformation emphasized. Formally, citizens can now legally store their assets on crypto exchanges. The law sets the amount of the exchanges’ minimum authorized capital from $42,000 for residents to $210,000 for non-residents. Exchanges can open bank accounts, but must obtain a separate license for each type of activity (storage and administration, exchange, transfer, brokerage). Cryptocurrencies will not become a means of payment, but acquiring operations are acceptable. In other words, in Ukraine it is now quite legal to pay with cryptocurrencies, albeit through an intermediary.
At the same time, Ukrainians are among the most avid users of cryptocurrencies around, ranking fourth on the Global Crypto Adoption Index. The annual turnover exceeded $8 billion, the daily volume of transactions with cryptocurrency was in the ballpark of $150 million, and every eighth Ukrainian citizen (approximately 5.5 million people) owned cryptocurrency. And how much remains in the shadow?
On February 24, 2023, Elliptic, the world’s leading provider of crypto-currency compliance and blockchain analytics solutions in the field of combating financial crime, released an analytical report “Crypto in Conflict Report.” The authors were particularly interested in operators that receive, store and convert crypto assets aimed at supporting Ukraine. On February 26, 2022, the Ukrainian government launched a new website for collecting cryptocurrency donations in cooperation with FTX and Everstake and the Ukrainian exchange Kuna. The project also involves the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine. The Aid for Ukraine website was supposed to send donated cryptocurrencies to the National Bank of Ukraine, Vlad Likhuta, Head of Growth at Everstake, told CoinDesk.
On November 11, 2022, the world’s second largest cryptocurrency exchange FTX went bankrupt, just two days after the midterm elections to the US Congress. FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried (one of the main sponsors of the US Democratic Party and a close friend of Bill Clinton) immediately stepped down as its CEO, with a personal fortune of $17 billion. In addition to the exchange itself, its subsidiary cryptocurrency trading fund Alameda Research and 130 other partner companies also went bust. The overall shortage of funds ranges from $8 billion to $16 billion. The resource was gone now. On the day of the FTX bankruptcy, Fox News commentator Jesse Watters told his 2.7 million followers that Ukraine had used US aid money and “invested” in FTX, pointing to the existence of a “money laundering” scheme in the interests of the Democratic Party. Watters cited a graph that depicted a circular flow of money that began and ended with President Joe Biden. This is the largest corruption scheme for the theft of crypto assets in Ukraine, but similar cases abound.
On May 9, 2023, the Estonian State Prosecutor’s Office opened a criminal case against the Slava Ukraini NGO. The probe was initiated by the prosecutor’s office in early May to investigate the use of funds collected from donors to support the activities of Glory to Ukraine, while a separate investigation is underway in Ukraine against Glory to Ukraine’s partners.
Another participant in the “gray crypt business” was the Azov Foundation. According to the report, there were three major charitable actions held in support of Azov. The “Support Azov” organization has received over $23,000 in cryptocurrencies to help Azov fighters. The Azov-linked volunteer battalion, the Boatsman Boys, received just under $6,000 in cryptocurrency donations.
The https://supportazov.com/ website contains information about the amount of receipts, which at first glance tallies with the Elliptic report, save for manipulations with crypto wallet addresses.
Before address change:
The addresses of crypto wallets on the “Support AZOV” website have been changed and can be changed again at any time at the request of the Azov Foundation’s management, after which it would be impossible to know where the crypto donations actually went. Such manipulations allow one to redirect funds to another crypto wallet, hide the fact of fraud and complicate the collection of analytics by the regulatory authority. If you look at the amount of proceeds, it becomes clear that the $23,000 mentioned in the Elliptic report is dwarfed by the real amount of donated money collected by the Azov management. Fees are collected from different accounts, speaking on behalf of different persons, masking addresses of crypto wallets and wiping up traces.
The NBU and other regulatory authorities are unable to assess the real flow of cryptocurrency going through the foundations, personal wallets of representatives of these foundations, of leaders of Azov and fighters. Part of the money goes to the upkeep of the organizations, and the rest ends up in the personal wallets of specific individuals: the commanders of the “Azov” brigade set up the Azov One NGO, which organizes fundraising, covers the priority needs of the unit and cooperates with Azov’s partner foundations, as per their website. In fact, they do not buy anything, and simply store the crypt.
There is reason to believe that Ukrainian recipients spend crypto donations by naive citizens at their own discretion, organizing an well-oiled crypto business. It is no secret that Ukrainian elites, government officials and battalion commanders roll in dough, their children live and study abroad, their wives dress in high-class fashion houses and buy expensive real estate. It looks like no matter how much Western partners urge Kyiv to root out corruption, it remains very much alive and kicking.
Originally published: 2023-08-28
Author: Slaviša Batko Milačić – Montenegrin analyst and historian
Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.
Read our Disclaimer/LegalStatement!
DonatetoSupportUs
We would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics, and international relations.
IntroductionThe aim of this article is to shed new light on the question of how the configuration of post-war Central and South-East Europe was shaped during WWII by the USSR through its relations with the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (the CPY). Relationships between the CPY and the Soviet Union in 1941−1945 depended on the concrete military situation in Europe, and on the diplomatic relationships between the Soviet Union and the other members of the anti-fascist Alliance. For that reason, the Soviet Union and the CPY were cooperating in two directions during WWII. The concrete military situation in the battleground of ...
Thankfully humanity is freed from the scourge of a third Hillary and Bill Clinton crime family co-presidency – she in the lead role with her finger on the nuclear trigger as US military commander-in-chief, perhaps eager to squeeze it.Newsweek magazine jumped the gun, printing a special edition, distributing it to outlets before November 8 – Hillary on the cover below the heading “MADAM PRESIDENT.”Shades of November 3, 1948, the Chicago Tribune headlining “DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN.” A beaming President HST held up a copy of the broadsheet, saying: “That ain’t the way I heard it!”Like polls predicted a Hillary victory this ...
“Fool me once, shame on you; but fool me twice, shame on me.”Ancient proverb, (sometimes attributed to an Italian, Russian or Chinese proverb) “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius, and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.” Ernst F. Schumacher (1911-1977) (in ‘Small is Beautiful’, an essay, in The Radical Humanist, Aug. 1973, p. 22). “The powers-that-be understand that to create the appropriate atmosphere for war, it’s necessary to create within the general populace a hatred, fear or mistrust of others regardless of whether those others belong ...
IntroductionThe last open armed conflict in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia – FYROM (former Socialist Republic of Macedonia as one of six federal republics of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) in May 2015 was just an expected continuation of constant tensions between the ethnic Albanians and the Macedonian Slavs during the last quarter of a century.[i] However, these tensions are time to time transformed into the open armed conflicts of the Albanian extremists, usually coming from Kosovo, with the Macedonian security forces.The most notable conflict incidents in Macedonia after the Kosovo War in 1998−1999, when the Kosovo Albanians ...
Vladislav B. Sotirovic, “Who are the Albanians? The Illyrian Anthroponomy and the Ethnogenesis of the Albanians – A Challenge to Regional Security”, Serbian Studies: Journal of the North American Society for Serbian Studies, Vol. 26, 2012, № 1−2, ISSN 0742-3330, 2015, Slavica Publishers, Indiana University, Bloomington, USA, pp. 45−76Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection & Pinterest.Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate to Support UsWe would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on ...
Who are the repefugees coming to Europe as the "immigrants"? Or at least some of them:No comment!Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate to Support UsWe would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.[wpedon id="4696" align="left"]SaveSave
The Senate Report’s revelations of CIA torture of suspects following the 9/11 bombing is only the tip of the iceberg. The Report omits the history and wider scope of violent activity in which the CIA has been and continues to be involved. CIA organized large scale death squad activities and extreme torture in Vietnam (Phoenix Project); multiple assassinations of political leaders in the Congo, Chile, Dominican Republic, Vietnam, the Middle East, Central America and elsewhere; the kidnapping and disappearance of suspected activists in Iraq and Afghanistan; massive drug-running and narco-trafficking in the “Golden Triangle” in Southeast Asia and Central America (the Iran-Contra war).The Senate Report fails to locate ...
It is unreasonable to ask taxpayers to pay billions more dollars for NATO’s budget because they get less and less peace, security and stability, says Jan Oberg, director of Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research.NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the bloc’s security spending would see its biggest increase since 2014, by 4.3 per cent in 2017. This is a response to US President Donald Trump‘s criticism of NATO countries failing to increase military budgets.Stoltenberg also said the alliance has combat-ready forces along Russia’s border.“NATO’s four multinational battle groups in the Baltic countries and Poland are now fully operational, ...
Needless to say, the important and portentous story of the attempted subversion of the Orthodox Church using the intelligence and political instruments still at the disposal of the moribund post-Christian West has gone virtually unreported, uncommented, and uncondemned. It concerns the multi-front offensive currently being unleashed against the most ancient and authentic Christian communion, the Orthodox Church.The epicenter of this externally induced commotion is at this moment in Montenegro, NATO’s latest “catch” in its persistent effort to secure or at least neutralize the Balkan rear, with a view to the projected conflict with Russia. One of the major remaining targets in ...
Against the backdrop of US aggression against North Korea, NATO is intensifying its preparations for war with Russia, the world’s second largest nuclear power. A report in the German news magazine Der Spiegel (Issue 43/2017) based on a secret NATO document indicates how far plans for war have progressed. The news magazine concludes:“In plain language: NATO is preparing for a possible war with Russia.”In the document entitled “Progress report on the Alliance’s Enhanced Deterrence and Defence Disposition,” leading military figures call for a major boost to military capabilities in order to conduct a so-called “Major Joint Operation Plus.” The abstruse ...
Compare Donald Trump and Barack Obama: Trump bans people from Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and Somalia but Obama bombed people from Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and Somalia! The question is: Who is a bigger racist?Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate to Support UsWe would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.[wpedon id="4696" align="left"]
A woman working at Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand has been arrested for allegedly selling a 14-day-old baby.Two other women employees from the centre have been detained and are being questioned about other possible cases.Police took action after the state’s Child Welfare Committee (CWC) registered a complaint.The charity has not responded to BBC requests for comment.“We have found out that some other babies have also been illegally sold from the centre,” a police official told BBC Hindi’s Niraj Sinha. “We have obtained the names of the mothers of these babies and are further ...
Statistics from 2014Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate to Support UsWe would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.[wpedon id="4696" align="left"]SaveSave
The United States is immersed in a political St. Vitus’s dance typical of empires in convulsion. The confident colossus that watched its arch-rival disintegrate from 1989-1991 now has its highest office occupied by a malevolent clown enabled by supporters befitting a casting call for a Hieronymous Bosch panel. The liberal class gnashes its teeth and blames Trump, the Koch brothers, the Tea Party. But the shock is hardly credible. The current political trap befits a country that internalized its own Cold War propaganda campaign from 1945-1991. The unrelenting flow of messages aimed at keeping Americans fearful and accommodating debased our ...
How many times have we seen this before?The President of the United States is on TV telling us horror stories. Some innocent people in some corner of the world are being crushed, he tells us. They face some monstrously evil oppressor, he says. While the United States doesn’t like war, what choice is there? Sacrifices must be made, cruise missiles must be unleashed, to protect the poor and innocent. The world is the set of an action movie, and the US is the tragic hero, forced to rescue the innocent.This is the script we heard in former Yugoslavia. Bill Clinton ...
The Supreme Court’s acceptance of a case about the allocation of voting districts will have consequences far beyond the millions of U.S. taxpayers its ruling may deprive of representation. A decision that only counts voters, rather than all persons, will undermine the very foundation of the Republic.The American Revolution was fought over “taxation without representation,” and those who wrote the Constitution carefully apportioned taxation and representation among the states “according to their respective Numbers . . . of free Persons . . . and . . . three-fifths of all other Persons.” The authors clearly equated We, the People with ...
The Axis powers invaded Yugoslavia on 6 April 1941. Vladko Maček, the leader of the Croatian Peasant Party (HSS) which was the most influential party in Croatia at the time, rejected offers by the Nazi Germany to lead the new government. On 10 April the most senior home-based Ustaša, Slavko Kvaternik, took control of the police in Zagreb and in a radio broadcast that day proclaimed the formation of the Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH). The new Independent State of Croatia" was established as a pro-Nazi government. It was dedicated to a clerical-fascist ideology influenced both by ...
"Welcome to Nulandistan: Propaganda and the Crisis in Ukraine" (2014)This full length GRTV documentary looks at the fictitious land of Nulandistan that has been constructed out of Ukraine.The GRTV documentary deconstructs Nulandistan and the propaganda of the Obama Administration [...], the US Department of States, US officials, and their allies about the crisis in Ukraine and takes a look at their growing frustration towards the Russian media, particularly RT, for challenging their account of the events on the ground in what they have declared is an intensifying information war.The full length documentary starts by looking at the self-benefiting description of ...
How many people have been killed in the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Somalia? On Nov. 18, a UN press briefing on the war in Yemen declared authoritatively that it had so far killed 5,700 people, including 830 women and children. But how precise are these figures, what are they based on, and what relation are they likely to bear to the true numbers of people killed?Throughout the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, the media has cited UN updates comparing numbers of Afghans killed by “coalition forces” and the “Taliban.” Following the U.S. escalation of the war in 2009 and 2010, a report by McClatchy in ...
The magazine is covering the research gaps uncovered by global Western hoax mainstream media platforms and academic teaching & research institutions.
This is an alternative information & academic research digest platform with the purpose to offer an alternative “another side of the truth”.
The magazine is independent, private, and free of any influence by any institution, organization, government, or pressure group. URL: www.global-politics.eu
