The move, reported by WuBlockchain and Japanese government bulletins, targets 33 entities and 9 individuals, including Garantex, and imposes a ban on providing services to 35 vessels identified as part of Russia's "shadow fleet" transporting oil in violation of price cap rules.
The timing is pointed. It came just a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin publicly offered Tokyo "mutually beneficial" ties, a traditional Kremlin overture that Japanese officials pointedly ignored.
For a country that has often been criticized for moving slower than Washington or Brussels on Russia sanctions, the inclusion of Garantex is significant. It means three major economies — the US, EU, and Japan — now formally treat a crypto exchange as sanctionable infrastructure.
*The $96 Billion Exchange*
Garantex is not a normal exchange. Founded in April 2019 and originally registered in Estonia before relocating operations to Moscow, it became the go-to off-ramp for Russian elites, ransomware gangs, and darknet markets seeking to convert crypto into rubles and vice versa.
According to the US State Department and blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, Garantex processed over $96 billion in cryptocurrency transactions between April 2019 and March 2025.
Even more brazen: over $60 billion of that volume occurred _after_ the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) first sanctioned it in April 2022 for facilitating money laundering for ransomware actors including Conti, Black Basta, and the now-seized Hydra dark web market.
"Garantex has been used in sanctions evasion by Russian elites, as well as to launder proceeds of crime including ransomware, darknet market trade and thefts attributed to North Korea's Lazarus Group," Elliptic said.
US investigators allege the exchange deliberately gutted its compliance. Know-Your-Customer checks were minimal, accounts were registered under pseudonyms, and operators frequently rotated wallet addresses to evade blockchain tracing.
*Takedown, Then Rebirth as Grinex*
In March 2025, a US-led operation with Germany and Finland seized Garantex's domains and servers, froze nearly $28 million in crypto with help from Tether, and indicted two administrators — Aleksej Besciokov, 46, and Aleksandr Mira Serda, 40 — on money laundering and sanctions violation charges.
US Secret Service officials said they also obtained copies of Garantex's servers, including customer and accounting databases.
But as with Hydra before it, the takedown did not kill the network. Within weeks, blockchain analysts traced over $60 million in ruble-backed stablecoins (A7A5) moving via one-time-use wallets to a new platform called Grinex.
On-chain and off-chain evidence — shared liquidity, shared infrastructure, overlapping operational patterns — linked Grinex directly to Garantex's operators. In August 2025, OFAC sanctioned Grinex as Garantex's successor, along with three co-founders and six partner companies in Russia and Kyrgyzstan, and the State Department offered up to $6 million for information leading to arrests.
Japan's October designation now closes that successor loophole under Japanese law.
*Why Japan Matters*
The direct financial bite of a Japanese freeze is likely modest. Garantex had limited yen exposure or Japanese-held assets.
The signal, however, is not. As analysts noted, every coordinated designation hardens the compliance posture of mainstream platforms. Exchanges, card issuers, and fiat off-ramps worldwide run sanctions screening against US, EU, and now Japanese lists. Once Tokyo names the rails, any intermediary still connected to Garantex/Grinex faces heightened counterparty risk.
It also expands the battlefield from people to infrastructure. Japan's package pairs the crypto action with 35 shadow fleet tankers, acknowledging what Western intelligence has long argued: Russia's war economy now runs on two parallel unregulated systems — uninsured oil ships and unregulated crypto exchanges.
*What Comes Next*
Garantex's operators remain at large, and Grinex continues to solicit deposits despite sanctions. Japan's move will not dismantle the network alone.
But the pattern is clear: from OFAC in 2022, to EU's 16th package in early 2025, to the US-German-Finnish seizure, to OFAC's Grinex designation, to Tokyo this week, the net is tightening around the idea that crypto exchanges can operate as sovereign-free zones.
For ordinary crypto users, expect second-order friction: tighter screening, faster freezes on flagged addresses, and narrower access to crypto card products for users connected to Russia.
For Moscow, the message from Tokyo was colder than Putin's offer of friendship: there will be no mutually beneficial ties while $96 billion in laundered crypto keeps flowing through the war machine.