Lithuania’s Foreign Ministry has asked authorities in India for information on the alleged detention of a Lithuanian citizen, Aleksej Besčiokov, who is accused of having operated a cryptocurrency exchange that helped terrorists. The ministry says it has not received any information so far.
“Yesterday, the Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania in India sent a note to the competent Indian authorities, asking for information on the possible arrest or detention of a Lithuanian citizen,” the ministry told BNS on Friday.
“We can inform you that until this morning the Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania in India has not received any information from the competent authorities in India about the detained or arrested citizen of the Republic of Lithuania,” it said.
CNN reported earlier this week that Indian authorities had arrested Besčiokov wanted by the US for allegedly running a 96-billion-dollar (88 billion euro) cryptocurrency exchange that allowed terrorist organisations, drug traffickers, and cybercriminals to launder money.
Last week, the Garantex cryptocurrency exchange was seized and its assets, worth 26 million US dollars, were frozen, and an indictment against Besčiokov and an alleged accomplice was unsealed.
Police in the southwest Indian state of Kerala arrested Besčiokov this week, India’s Central Bureau of Investigation said in a statement that referred to Besčiokov as a “fugitive”.
Besčiokov had been living in Russia, according to the Justice Department. It is unclear why he travelled to India.
CNN has been unable to reach a lawyer representing Besčiokov.
According to the US Justice Department, Besčiokov and Aleksandr Mira Serda, a Russian man, allegedly ran Garantex. Besčiokov was in charge of keeping Garantex online and running its infrastructure, while Mira Serda was the exchange’s co-founder and “chief commercial officer”, according to the Justice Department.
The US Treasury Department sanctioned Garantex in 2022. In response, Besčiokov and others “redesigned Garantex’s operations” to evade sanctions and dupe US businesses into working with Garantex, according to the Justice Department. The exchange processed 96 billion US dollars in transactions between 2015 and 2019, according to the indictment.
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