Kremlin-Backed Fintech Moved $6.9bn Via Global Banks

A scheme linked to the Kremlin moved more than $6.9bn through the international banking system, using a fintech company whose industrial-scale document forgery operation allowed it to access the Swift payment network despite Western sanctions on Russia. Hundreds of thousands of files obtained from inside A7, a group created as an alternative to the Western payments system, reveal that payments passed through accounts at Standard Chartered, Citigroup, DBS, Deutsche Bank and First Abu Dhabi, among others. Some of the funds were tied to sensitive war-related goods, including military equipment and purchases by Russian security services.

The mechanics of the operation were deliberately old-fashioned. A7, set up in Russia and Kyrgyzstan by Moldovan oligarch Ilan Shor with support from Promsvyazbank, a state-owned lender with close ties to the defence industry, depended on a network of front companies and existing businesses to gain access to Swift. These agents were obscured by a forgery operation that produced counterfeit invoices on a vast scale. The files show at least 100 front companies making payments during the period covered by the leak, with documents referencing at least a further 100 such groups across the UAE, Hong Kong, Kyrgyzstan and Indonesia. The largest single paying entity was a now-closed Kyrgyz state body, the Trading Company of the Kyrgyz Republic.

The scale of the flows is striking. Accounts at Standard Chartered in Hong Kong alone received $1.1bn from A7-linked entities between late 2024, when A7 was established, and August 2025. DBS in Hong Kong received $273mn, Citigroup clients received $74mn, and clients of Deutsche Bank in Europe received about $18mn. A7 opened accounts at First Abu Dhabi, the largest bank in the UAE, for 17 different entities, which made more than $1.8bn of outbound payments. Chinese bank accounts were the final destination for just over half of the flows. At least three entities were based in the UK, where A7 was placed under sanctions in May 2025, and one entity in Hungary appears to have been the critical conduit for payments into the EU.

The scheme worked by having front companies arrange for cash to be deposited at banks within the Swift system, which could then be used to settle bills abroad for Russian companies. This is not a sophisticated cyber operation but classic money laundering, updated for the sanctions era. The Kremlin has touted A7 as its flagship provider of cross-border payments for imports since Russian banks were cut off from Swift after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Shor told the Russian state news agency Tass in July that the system was immune to sanctions because it offered companies and countries freedom.

The revelations raise serious questions about the effectiveness of the sanctions regime and the ability of global banks to detect such schemes. Zach Tvarozna, a former US government banking analyst, said the new data shows the true scale of A7’s money-laundering network is much bigger than anyone had previously realised, and that it should prompt a rethink about how hard it is to keep the system closed. The fact that A7 could move billions through major international banks, including those operating in Hong Kong, the UAE and Europe, suggests that compliance controls are being systematically outmanoeuvred through the use of forged documentation and shell entities.

The wider implication is that the current approach to sanctions enforcement, which relies heavily on individual banks flagging suspicious transactions, is vulnerable to precisely the kind of industrial-scale fraud that A7 perfected. The involvement of a Kyrgyz state body and the use of front companies across multiple jurisdictions point to a coordinated effort to exploit gaps in the global financial architecture. For regulators and bank compliance officers, the case is a reminder that the weakest links are often not the technology but the human and procedural systems designed to police it. The takeaway is straightforward: without more rigorous verification of corporate identities and payment documentation, the international banking system will remain open to abuse by those willing to invest in old-fashioned forgery.