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The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has imposed sanctions against several entities affiliated with the Russian Federation and the Kyrgyz Republic. Among them are companies belonging to oligarch Ilan Shor, which aim to conceal real money flows and avoid Western sanctions against Russia. These are the companies “A7”, “A71” and “A7-AGENT”, about which IPN recently wrote.

“If the Kremlin thinks it can hide its desperate attempts to soften the blow of our sanctions by laundering transactions through dubious crypto networks, it is sorely mistaken,” stated the British Minister for Europe and North America, Stephen Doughty.

According to British authorities, the sanctioned companies have used financial infrastructures, such as cryptocurrencies, to conceal the real source of the funds and to facilitate Russia’s financial transfers, bypassing the imposed international sanctions.

One way in which these entities contributed to the evasion of sanctions was by creating and operating the Grinex cryptocurrency exchange – created by employees of the Garantex platform, after it was subjected to international sanctions – with the main purpose of continuing Garantex operations, under a new identity, that of facilitating the transfer of billions of dollars in cryptocurrencies.

Therefore, the A7A5 token was created – a stablecoin created by the “A7” company, the main holder being Ilan Șor, and the second major shareholder is the Russian state bank Promsvyazbank, already under international sanctions. Its basic principle is simple: 1 (coin) A7A5 = 1 Russian ruble. Officially, it is promoted as a “new financial technology”, but in reality it represents a means of conducting transactions bypassing restrictions.

In July 2025, Elliptic reported a spectacular increase in transaction volumes: over $1 billion per day, with a total volume exceeding $41 billion, and the token’s market capitalization tripled, reaching $521 million in just two weeks.

However, shortly after the US imposed sanctions on these companies on August 14, the A7A5 market price fell sharply by 13%. The shock to the cryptocurrency triggered a chain reaction: the prices and trading volumes of other digital assets, including ETH (against which A7A5 is traded) and BTC, fell, and exchanges connected to A7A5 reported reduced liquidity and suspension of operations.