Overview
- Investigators say Altair Holding SA, tied to TGR boss Georgy Rossi, acquired a 75% stake in Kyrgyzstan’s Keremet Bank on 25 December 2024, which then facilitated cross‑border payments for Russia’s Promsvyazbank.
- Operation Destabilise has produced 128 arrests to date, including 45 in the past year, with more than £25 million seized in the UK and a further $24 million and €2.6 million recovered by international partners.
- The NCA identifies two Moscow-linked networks, TGR and Smart, as core operators laundering for ransomware groups and transnational criminals, with Smart also used to fund espionage in late 2022 to mid‑2023; key figures are under OFAC sanctions and Ekaterina Zhdanova is detained in France.
- Couriers collected cash in at least 28 UK towns and cities for rapid cash‑to‑crypto swaps, prompting NCA deterrence campaigns with English and Russian warnings in motorway service stations.
- Officials describe a financial chain from UK street-level crime to Russian state-linked activity, citing cases such as vehicles bought in Britain and sold into Ukraine by network operatives before profits were converted to cryptocurrency.