 Russia seizes $10M in Bitcoin from ex-official in bribery case 
2025-01-10
Category: None

The Russian government has confiscated $10 million worth of Bitcoin from a former law enforcement official, according to local reports.
Russian court enforcement officers have started confiscating Bitcoin BTCUSD from a former employee at the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation (ICRF) in a massive bribery case involving cryptocurrency.
The officers began proceedings to seize 1 billion Russian rubles ($10 million) — or roughly 103 BTC — from former ICRF employee Marat Tambiev, who was convicted of crypto bribery in 2023, the local news agency TASS reported on Jan. 8.
The confiscated Bitcoin will be added to Russia’s state revenue as part of the legal proceedings. Officers reportedly accessed Tambiev’s hardware cryptocurrency wallet, a Ledger Nano X, to seize the assets.
The bribe netted 2,718 BTC — the largest bribery ever seen in Russia
The 103 BTC seized in Tambiev’s case represents only 4% of the total bribe amount, local sources said.
In October 2024, a Russian court sentenced Tambiev to 16 years in prison for accepting a bribe of 2,718 BTC, worth roughly $258 million. The case has been described as the largest bribery case in the history of Russia, according to the local news agency RBC.
In 2023, the Nikulinsky District Court of Moscow ordered the seizure of 1,032 BTC, worth around $98 million, from Tambiev, stating that the assets were acquired through unconfirmed income. 
Hacker group Infraud Organization behind the bribe
Tambiev was reportedly arrested in March 2022, and enforcement officers located his Bitcoin wallet private keys on his laptop in a folder named “Retirement.”
The officers and the court concluded that Tambiev received thousands of BTC from a hacker group known as the Infraud Organization.
The group members, Kazakhstani citizens Mark and Konstantin Bergman and Estonian citizen Kirill Samokutyaev, reportedly bribed Tambiev for various procedural decisions, including their own criminal case.
The investigation found that the bribery case involved multiple former ICRF employees who reportedly extorted a bribe from Infraud Organization hackers.
The bribery was reportedly offered in exchange for stopping the hackers’ criminal prosecution and an opportunity to hide crypto assets worth at least 14 billion rubles ($138 million), according to TASS.