The United States has designated the Russian A7 Network as a transnational criminal organization and plans to cut off its cryptocurrency funding channels

The U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control has designated the Russian shadow banking network A7 Network as a significant transnational criminal organization, listing its related addresses in Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network has proposed a draft rule to prohibit U.S. entities from participating in any fund transfers involving the network's "sub-agent companies," covering convertible virtual currencies and not limited to fiat currencies, which is expected to restrict about 348,000 entities, including several cryptocurrency exchanges.

The proposal is based on six special measures granted by Section 9714 of the Anti-Money Laundering Act against Russia, ultimately selecting the sixth measure, which is the fund transfer ban. The fifth measure, which restricts correspondent accounts, was considered to have loopholes: research by blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs shows that A7A5 transactions completely bypassed the correspondent banking system, which the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network views as a core aspect of its business model. A7A5 is a ruble-backed token issued by Old Vector registered in Kyrgyzstan, operating on Tron and Ethereum, with reserves held at the Russian state-owned defense bank Promsvyazbank.

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network stated that between February 2025 and June 2026, over 180 entities handled at least $17.91 billion in A7A5, which historically circulated almost entirely through the sanctioned exchanges Garantex and Grinex, often used as a non-frozen bridge to convert into USDT and then into fiat currency.