A Russian IT specialist has been sentenced to 13 years in jail on charges of financing terrorism after the cryptocurrency exchange Binance passed details of his donations to Ukrainian fundraising campaigns to Moscow, Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing a court statement.
Source: Reuters
The 2nd Western District Military Court convicted 49-year-old Yuri Belenkiy on Monday and sentenced him to three years in prison plus 10 years in a strict-regime penal colony, according to the court statement cited by Reuters. Belenkiy, who has a Bulgarian residence permit, denied the charges, according to the court.
Belenkiy was detained in September last year when he flew to Moscow for a visit, and has been in custody since, Reuters reported.
What the documents seen by Reuters said
According to Russian law enforcement documents seen by Reuters, Belenkiy had responded to online appeals to help buy medical equipment for Ukrainian soldiers by transferring money from his Binance accounts to the Ukrainian military. Some payments went to the Azov Brigade, also known as the Azov Regiment, according to those documents.
The same documents showed that Binance provided Russian investigators with Belenkiy's transaction history last year, including records of transfers to Ukrainian fundraising campaigns, in response to a Russian request, and that the records were instrumental in prosecuting him, Reuters reported. Reuters had first reported Binance's response in August.
According to the records, Belenkiy sent more than $700 to the Ukrainian military in response to an online appeal by Arkady Babchenko, an exiled Russian critic of the Kremlin who supports Ukraine.
"The response from Binance serves as key evidence in the criminal case against Belenkiy," said Yevgeny Smirnov, a lawyer with the rights group First Department, which assists people facing politically motivated prosecutions in Russia, as quoted by Reuters.
The case is part of the wider Russia-Ukraine war story: Moscow treats donations to Ukraine's military as a crime, while the donors and rights groups describe such prosecutions as politically motivated. Those characterisations are attributed claims, not settled findings, and Awaaz Punjab is reporting the court's sentence and the documents as Reuters described them.