A Russian court sentenced Yuri Belenky, director of the IT company DiHouse, to 13 years in prison on terrorism financing charges, Radio Liberty reported on 26 October. The case concerns cryptocurrency donations that investigators believe were meant for Ukraine’s Armed Forces, the outlet said. The court also fined Belenky 500,000 rubles ($6,200), according to the report.
Since 2022, Russian courts have imprisoned Russians and Ukrainians under treason, terrorism, and other national-security laws over donations to Ukrainian causes. Binance, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, left Russia in 2023 but says it cooperates with lawful law-enforcement requests in different countries.
Belenky had lived in Bulgaria with his wife and child since 2015. In September 2025, he traveled to Moscow on business, and police detained him at the airport for allegedly using obscene language, Radio Liberty reported. In court, Belenky denied swearing, but the judge gave him 13 days of administrative detention. On the 10th day of his detention, Russia’s Investigative Committee opened a criminal case against him under an article on terrorism financing, based on a report from the Federal Security Service, according to the report.
Binance shared account records with Russian investigators, rights group says
In October 2025, Russia’s Investigative Committee contacted Binance to request information on six users who had transferred funds to a cryptocurrency wallet published by journalist Arkady Babchenko, the Russian human rights project First Department said on 17 August 2026. The exchange provided investigators with Belenky’s detailed account history, including his personal information, copies of identification documents, and cryptocurrency transaction records, according to the organization. The human rights project said the materials helped investigators identify nine more transfers, which went into the final charge against Belenky. Binance told his lawyer it does not give law enforcement user account data without a court order or an equivalent ruling, the group said.
Belenky’s alleged offense was transferring donations totaling 126,000 rubles ($1,560) between 2022 and 2024 to an account published by Babchenko, Radio Liberty reported. The court ordered that sum confiscated.
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The court said the money in Babchenko’s account went to Ukraine’s Armed Forces and the Azov battalion, which Russia designates as a terrorist organization, Radio Liberty reported.
In a statement dated 14 October 2025, Babchenko said he had not received transfers from Belenky to the cryptocurrency wallets he had published. He emphasized that he had raised money for civilian humanitarian needs, not to support the military.
Binance’s exit from Russia and previous data-sharing concerns
In September 2023, Binance announced that it would sell its entire Russian business to cryptocurrency exchange CommEX, according to the company’s website. Operating in Russia was incompatible with Binance’s compliance strategy, the exchange’s chief compliance officer, Noah Perlman, said in the announcement. Binance said it would fully exit the Russian market, receive no share of future revenue from the sale, and retain no option to buy back the business.
CommEX said on 29 September 2023 that it was not owned by Binance but confirmed that it had hired some former Binance employees during the platform’s six-month development, Cointelegraph reported.
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The exit came after earlier questions about Binance’s dealings with the Russian state. In April 2021, Russian financial intelligence officials met with Binance’s head of Eastern Europe and Russia in Moscow and asked the exchange to provide customer data, including names and addresses, Reuters reported in April 2022. The Binance executive agreed to the request in a message to a business associate, saying he didn’t have “much of a choice,” the outlet said. Binance told Reuters it had never been contacted by Russian authorities about Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.
In February 2026, 11 US senators asked the Treasury Department and the Justice Department to investigate Binance’s compliance with sanctions and anti-money laundering rules, Cointelegraph reported. They cited reports that about $1.7 billion had moved through Binance to Iran-linked entities, as well as possible activity related to evading Russian sanctions. The senators also warned that Binance payment cards launched in parts of the former Soviet Union could facilitate sanctions evasion. Binance rejected the allegations.
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