US Blocks Crypto Addresses of Sanctioned Citizens

The US will impose “full blocking sanctions” on Jonathan Zimenkov and his crypto addresses due to his ties to the sanctions evasion network.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has added two cryptocurrency wallets believed to be linked to a Russian sanctions evasion network to its list.

In an announcement on Feb. 1, OFAC said it added one bitcoin address and one ether address.

OFAC said it would impose “total block sanctions” on 22 people, including Jonathan Zimenkov, a Russian citizen with access to at least one BTC wallet and one ETH wallet.

According to the US Treasury, Jonathan is the son of Igor Vladimirovich Zimenkov, an arms dealer who runs a network to evade sanctions. The group was allegedly behind the supply of technology to a Russian company following the country’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, as well as supporting some “sanctioned state-owned Russian defense enterprises,” including Rosoboronexport and Rostec.

“Igor Zimenkov was included in the list for work or work in the defense and related military sector of the economy of the Russian Federation,” OFAC said in a statement. “Jonathan Zimenkov was also listed for providing material assistance, sponsorship or providing financial, material or technological support, goods or services to Igor Zimenkov.”

The BTC address provided by the Treasury did not show a balance at the time of publication. The ETH address also contained no tokens, but showed four transactions totaling roughly 5,463 ETH at the beginning of 2022 – over $16 million at the time.

Such measures do not seem to be effective due to the ability to create a new wallet in a minute, and due to the fact that there is Monero, for example, or other coins that allow you to increase the confidentiality of transactions. It turns out some kind of struggle with windmills.