Tech
Russian money launderers bought a bank to disguise ransomware profit | Computer Weekly
A billion-dollar money laundering network active in the UK bought a bank in the Central Asian state of Kyrgyzstan to facilitate the washing of profits from cyber crime and other criminal activity, and convert it into cryptocurrency that was used to evade sanctions on Russia in support of the Putin regime’s war on Ukraine, according to the National Crime Agency (NCA).
So-called cash-to-crypto swaps are a core part of the global criminal ecosystem. In 2024, the NCA and its European and North American partners came down hard on two full-service Russian-run money laundering networks, TGR and Smart, which washed money on behalf of multiple ransomware crews, including the likes of Evil Corp, Conti and Ryuk, in an ongoing series of actions dubbed Operation Destabilise.
In the past 12 months, Operation Destabilise has seen 45 suspected money launderers arrested and £5.1m in cash seized. Since its inception, 128 arrests and over £25m have been seized in cash and crypto assets in the UK, plus millions more abroad.
“Today, we can reveal the sheer scale at which these networks operate and draw a line between crimes in our communities, sophisticated organised criminals and state-sponsored activity,” said NCA deputy director for economic crime, Sal Melki.
“The networks disrupted through Destabilise operate at all levels of international money laundering, from collecting the street cash from drug deals, through to purchasing banks and enabling global sanctions breaches.”
The connection into Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet state sandwiched between Kazakhstan and China, was uncovered in August, when a company linked to TGR ringleader George Rossi, Altair Holding SA, was sanctioned in the UK as part of a crackdown on known Russian efforts to circumvent Western sanctions by exploiting the Kyrgyz financial system.
It can now be revealed that Altair bought a 75% stake in Kyrgyzstan-based Keremet Bank on 25 December 2024. The NCA has subsequently found that Keremet facilitated extensive cross-border payments on behalf of state-owned Promsvyazbank.
Promsvyazbank, which was nationalised by the Russian government in 2018, was also sanctioned by the US and UK following the invasion of Ukraine, and has been accused of links to Russian attempts to rig elections in Moldova through the populist, pro-Russian politician and oligarch Ilon Shor, who also orchestrated the theft of over $1bn from the country’s banking system in 2014.
Shor’s A7 company at one time collaborated with Promsvyazbank on the launch of a rouble-backed cryptocurrency stablecoin, A7A5, and networks linked to the firm have likely been designed to allow cross-border payments to circumvent sanctions in support of Russia’s military-industrial complex, said the NCA.
Beyond ransomware
It was cyber crime, specifically the network’s links to Evil Corp and bitcoin payments made by its victims, that first led the NCA and its partners to the activity, when they spotted the profits of ransomware attacks going into an individual crypto exchange account that was linked to UK-based money launderers it had already identified.
However, the activities of TGR and Smart extend into other areas of organised criminality across the UK, including the drugs and firearms trade and immigration fraud. The NCA would not, however, be drawn at this stage on any involvement in its other investigations into cyber criminal activity or any of the major cyber attacks that have unfolded this year in the UK.
Besides funnelling these funds into propping up Russia’s war on Ukraine – the agency described a “clear thread” between small-time Friday night cocaine deals in UK bars and clubs to Russian missile strikes on Ukrainian civilians – the network also made money available to wealthy Russians living in the West as a concierge service, and even incorporated some of it back into the UK banking system through traditionally cash-rich businesses, such as small building firms.
The identified and arrested individuals linked to money laundered through the network include two Russian nationals who bought cars and vans in the UK, shipped them to Ukraine and sold them to the Ukrainian government, which was unaware it was funding its enemy’s war effort.
Operation Destabilise also ensnared a number of Brits, such as Scottish footballer James Keatings, who investigators witnessed transferring boxes of cash from a van during a June 2024 handover of almost £400,000.
Keatings, a former member of Celtic’s youth development programme who went on to play for both Heart of Midlothian and Hibernian during his career, was jailed for 13 months earlier this year after he admitted possessing and transferring criminal property at Falkirk Sheriff Court.
Like Keatings, many of the network’s UK operatives were mules tasked by the network’s “managers” with driving all over the country to pick up cash from lower-level criminals.
They have been targeted by NCA poster campaigns in locations they frequent, often in motorway service station toilets. The NCA said its objective had been to “make these courier networks sweat”, and it has seen some success in scaring them off.
“Millions of Britons will have seen these messages at service stations, but rest assured, they were not for you,” said Melki. “To the launderers who will have seen them, your choice is simple: either stop this line of work, or prepare to come face to face with one of our officers and the reality of your choices. Easy money leads to hard time.”
Corporate AI slop feels inescapable in 2025. From website banner ads to outdoor billboards, images generated by businesses using AI tools surround me. Hell, even the bar down the street posts happy hour flyers with that distinctly hazy, amber glow of some AI graphics.
On Thursday, Google launched Nano Banana Pro, the company’s latest image-generating model. Many of the updates in this release are targeted at corporate adoption, from putting Nano Banana Pro in Google Slides for business presentations to integrating the new model with Google Ads for advertisers globally.
This “Pro” release is an iteration on its Nano Banana model that dropped earlier this year. Nano Banana became a viral sensation after users started posting personalized action figures and other meme-able creations on social media.
Nano Banana Pro builds out the AI tool with a bevy of new abilities, like generating images in 4K resolution. It’s free to try out inside Google’s Gemini app, with paid Google One subscribers getting access to additional generations.
One specific improvement is going to be catnip for corporations in this release: text rendering. From my initial tests generating outputs with text, Nano Banana Pro improves on the wonky lettering and strange misspellings common in many image models, including Google’s past releases.
Google wants the images generated by this new model—text and all—to be more polished and production-ready for business use cases. “Even if you have one letter off it’s very obvious,” says Nicole Brichtova, a product lead for image and video at Google DeepMind. “It’s kind of like having hands with six fingers; it’s the first thing you see.” She says part of the reason Nano Banana Pro is able to generate text more cleanly is the switch to a more powerful underlying model, Gemini 3 Pro.
Stern said text messages obtained by authorities show Li boasting about how his father “had engaged in similar business on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party.” Stern alleged the messages also show Li, who works at a hardware distribution company, was aware through news articles he shared that the Nvidia chips were subject to export controls. “He explained that his father had ways to import them,” Stern said, again citing Li’s text messages.
Stern told the court that Li “did admit to various facts” during questioning by federal agents on Wednesday that implicated him.
The defendants face various charges related to violating export control laws and up to 20 years in prison.
Ho and Raymond did not immediately respond to requests for comment sent to LinkedIn accounts purportedly belonging to them. Public defenders for Chen and Li declined to comment.
Nvidia spokesperson John Rizzo said in a statement that “even small sales of older generation products on the secondary market are subject to strict scrutiny and review” and that “trying to cobble together datacenters from smuggled products is a nonstarter, both technically and economically.”
Corvex, an AI cloud computing business Raymond consulted for, said in a statement that it had rescinded a job offer for him to join the company full-time and that it had no connection to the alleged wrongdoing.
Earlier this year, the US Department of Commerce was reportedly considering restricting the sale of advanced chips to Malaysia and Thailand in an effort to curb chip smuggling, but the regulations have yet to be finalized. The Commerce Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Magistrate Judge Westmore ordered Li to hire an attorney because she said he had significant equity in a San Leandro, California, home and other assets, making him ineligible for a public defender. The magistrate also set a hearing for Tuesday to decide whether Li is a significant flight risk and should continue to be detained. He holds a US green card and Hong Kong citizenship.
Li, wearing glasses, flipflops, and a black windbreaker, nodded in response to some of Westmore’s statements but did not speak. Kaitlyn Fryzek, his temporary public defender, said Li is planning to marry a US citizen. “His incentive is to stay and get married to his fiancée,” Fryzek said.
The caveat is that the iPhone user will need to switch AirDrop into the “Everyone for 10 Minutes” mode instead of “Contacts Only” mode. Google says this isn’t some kind of workaround solution. It’s a direct, peer-to-peer connection; your data isn’t routed through a server, shared content isn’t logged, and no extra data is shared. Naturally, iPhone owners will be able to send data back to Pixel 10 phones as well.
Google has not worked with Apple on this cross-compatibility, as the company says it “welcomes the opportunity” to work with Apple so that this sharing function can work in the Contacts Only mode. “We accomplished this through our own implementation,” a Google spokesperson tells WIRED. “Our goal is to provide an easy and secure file-sharing experience for our users, regardless of who they are communicating with.”
In a security blog post, Google says the underlying strategy for what makes this new synergy between Quick Share and AirDrop work is the memory-safe Rust programming language. “These overlapping protections on both platforms work in concert with the secure connection to provide comprehensive safety for your data when you share or receive,” writes Dave Kleidermacher, vice president of Google’s platforms security and privacy.
Google tapped NetSPI, a third-party and independent penetration testing firm, to validate the security of the new sharing feature. The findings? The interoperability is “notably stronger” than other industry implementations. That’s pretty important, considering what happened the last time someone tried to improve cross-compatibility between iOS and Android without Apple: The startup Beeper tried to make texts from Android phones show up as blue bubbles on iPhones and caused all kinds of drama.
The number of people who can actually use this feature is limited because it’s only available on Google’s latest Pixel 10 smartphones, which just launched this past August. However, Google says it’s looking to expand the feature to more Android devices in the future.
This new feature in Quick Share is rolling out starting today to the Pixel 10 series, which includes the Google Pixel 10, Pixel 10 Pro, Pixel 10 Pro XL, and Pixel 10 Pro Fold. As it’s rolling out, you may not see it immediately on your device. To use it, all you need to do is select something to share, whether it’s a file, contact, or photo, choose Quick Share in the sharing menu, and make sure the iPhone owner has their AirDrop set to “Everyone for 10 Minutes Only.” The iPhone will be able to see the Pixel 10 device and can receive or send data.
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