Condemnation of ‘Bitcoin Czar’ under Pandora Papers

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) has identified a major crypto criminal among those who allegedly channeled money from Pandora Papers into seedy tax havens.

According to an ICIJ October 3 document summarizing the organization’s findings from the Pandora Papers investigation, offshore assets belong to what is known as the “Bitcoin Czar convicted of money laundering related to attackers by the company.”

Pandora Papers comprises a 2.94 terabyte data warehouse with 11.9 million data records from 14 different foreign service providers. The documents claim to reveal the hidden assets of more than 330 politicians and senior officials from 90 different jurisdictions, including 35 national leaders and more than 130 billionaires.

The ICIJ also notes that the documents can identify the assets of “bankers, big political donors, arms dealers, international criminals, pop stars, espionage directors and sports giants”.

Although the “Bitcoin Czar” identified in the Pandora Paper is not directly named, her conviction in relation to the most significant cyber thefts in history limits that person’s ability.

Reporters have described the Carbanak hacking group’s activities as unprecedented in size and value, with the group estimated to have stolen more than $ 1.24 billion from financial institutions and corporations in the United States in more than 100 countries from 2013 to 2017.

While two of the six people were convicted of their roles in Carbanak, the circumstances of the arrest of Carbanak’s alleged leader Denis Tokarenko (also known as Denis Katana) in 2018 revealed that he was the perpetrator identified in the Pandora Papers.

According to an article by Bloomberg Businessweek about Tokarenko’s arrest in March 2018, the Spanish National Police found 15,000 bitcoins, valued at $ 162 million at the time, in the hacker’s possession.

Carlos Yuste, chief inspector of the Cybercrime Center of the Spanish National Police, told the publication that Tokarenko also used a bitcoin mining operation purchased in China to launder his stolen funds.

Many analysts also describe the 2016 robbery of the Bangladesh Bank, in which hackers stole nearly $ 1 billion from the accounts of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York owned by the Central Bank of Bangladesh, as the largest virtual robbery history.

Related: The EU is removing this crypto hotspot from the blacklist of tax havens and paving the way for further introduction

However, former Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation employee Maia Santos Deguito is the only person convicted of cyber theft to date, and an investigation by Cointelegraph has revealed no sources to link Deguito to crypto assets.