The US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced Tuesday that sanctions have been imposed on Russia-based cryptocurrency trading services company Suex, and added to the list of banned entities and persons (SDN).

Thus, the “Suex” platform became the first cryptocurrency exchange to be subject to sanctions by the US Treasury.

The ban means that US citizens are not allowed to do business with the company.

According press releaseIn it, I told the Treasury Department that the “Suex” platform allegedly facilitated the financial transactions of certain bad actors who used the ransomware threat, and as a quote from the statement, the following:

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SUEX has facilitated transactions involving illicit proceeds from at least eight ransomware transactions.

An analysis of known SUEX transactions shows that more than 40% of the SUEX transaction history is associated with illicit actors.

SUEX is designated and classified pursuant to Executive Order 13694, as amended, as providing material support to the threat posed by criminal ransomware actors.

Through the announcement, the US Treasury highlighted that cryptocurrency platform SUEX has contributed to the profitability of hackers who use ransomware to spread attacks.

This punishment comes in the wake of recent actions taken by the administration of US President “Joe Biden” against cyber attacks, which have become a source of national security concern.

Track criminal financial transactions:

While most cryptocurrency activities are legitimate, cryptocurrencies can be used for illegal activities and laundered through mixers and peer-to-peer trading platforms.

This facilitates evasion of penalties, ransomware schemes, and other cybercrimes.

OFAC added in its statement that some cryptocurrency exchanges are being exploited by malicious actors, but others, such as with SUEX, facilitate illicit activities for illicit gain.

According to Chainalysis, the Suex platform has many transactions related to money laundering.

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Chinalysis noted that several Suex wallet addresses are included in the pool of 273 deposit addresses, which received 55% of all funds from illicit addresses in 2020.

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