Garantex Moves $15M Despite Tether Freeze, Data Shows

Despite a widely publicized asset freeze by Tether and coordinated sanctions across the world, Russian crypto exchange Garantex has managed to transfer millions of digital assets on the blockchain — demonstrating acute loopholes in the efficacy of crypto blacklists and asset-freezing regimes.

According to a recent news report by blockchain forensics firm Glass Ledger, over $15 million worth of reserves linked to Garantex has been actively transferred since March, staying off blacklists by hopping between chains, using mixers like Tornado Cash, and exploiting successor platforms like Grinex.

The drama began early in March, when US, German, and Finnish regulators froze $27 million of USDT held by Garantex as part of a sweeping crackdown on the sanctioned exchange. Tether's freeze, which was implemented at the smart contract level, was hailed as a crypto compliance milestone, with regulators trumpeting it as proof that digital assets can be made subject to on-chain blacklists.

Garantex, in turn, directly accused Tether of ”declaring war on the Russian crypto market” and shut down temporarily, but first threatened customers it had ”solutions” for individuals with BTC and ETH.

How Garantex Funds Kept Moving

Later on-chain information revealed that the freeze was only the tip of the iceberg of a new cat-and-mouse game. One of the long-dormant Garantex Ethereum wallets that first raised the eyebrows of compliance experts was revived in March and collected over 3,200 ETH before it flowed $2.3 million through Tornado Cash, a highly respected decentralized mixer used to launder dirty money.

The same wallet now holds $6.1 million worth of ETH, while other funds are moved on the Bitcoin and BNB blockchain. Notably, 2.2 BTC was bridged to Tron and partially sent to Grinex, which is the platform commonly regarded as Garantex's operational successor.

Their latest report details how Garantex exploited the delay between freeze statements and enforcement as well as the inherent limitations of blacklists in the multi-chain universe.

The investigative trail doesn't end there. Grinex, now suspected of appropriating Garantex's infrastructure and base of customers, has moved over $1.6 billion on international exchanges in just a few weeks, according to our reporting at Global Ledger.

Some of these flows directly or with intermediate hops to major regulated exchanges — raising the red flags of compliance and highlighting the danger even for platforms that have KYC and AML guidelines set up. In one case, $191,000 of USDT was sent directly from a wallet linked to Grinex to a top global exchange, and another $500,000 transfer ended up at an EU VASP in just a single intermediary wallet.

What's behind these transactions? Forensic analysts pinpoint several factors: blacklist-based freezing's limitations, delays in operations in Tether's multi-signature freeze mechanism (up to 44 minutes at times, long enough for bad guys to execute withdrawals prior to the freeze taking effect), and Garantex's tactic of hot wallet rotation, use of less-regulated blockchains, and use of cross-chain bridges in order to remain one step ahead of enforcement mechanisms.

Besides, Garantex's operating trends changed rapidly following sanctions: they changed address clustering, rerouted transactions to Asian exchanges like HTX and OKX, and began rotating hot wallets more frequently — daily sometimes to evade detection.

Compliance Challenges and Industry Response

Compliance experts now insist that exchanges go beyond the simple blacklist screening.

Exchanges are also requested to strengthen onboarding due diligence, flag high-risk flows from known mixers or successor entities, and cooperate with forensics firms for timely identification.

The Garantex case has once more fueled controversy surrounding the utilization of decentralized cross-chain bridges and mixers in enabling illicit finance. Although some suspect that mixers have a valid purpose for privacy, their adoption by criminals and sanctioned entities is currently surpassing the industry's ability to freeze and monitor assets, critics argue.

The appearance of services such as Grinex, essentially a rebranded Garantex, demonstrates how quickly criminals can adapt, bringing technology and userbases along with them in order to evade enforcement.