I'm Ben.
And this is your nightly news wrap-up.
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The Justice Department announcing crypto exchanges, payment services
like Venmo and Cash App and financial institutions will be in its crosshairs
as part of the hunt for oligarch assets.
Robert Frank joins us right now with more on this.
And, Robert, this is upping the ante once again,
trying to make sure that there's no way around these rules.
Exactly. The Justice Department warning crypto exchanges and the payment platforms
that they could become targets in this increasing and widening oligarch crackdown.
The new sanctions' task force is saying that banks and crypto exchanges
that fail to maintain adequate money laundering policies
will be in the crosshairs of this investigation.
And remember, trading between the ruble and crypto assets more than doubled
right after the invasion of Ukraine.
There's a new sheriff in town.
The Department of Justice recently launched a new task force
that will enforce strict sanctions against Russia and anyone else involved
in the effort to line their pockets,
crypto exchanges included.
The name of this task force is KleptoCapture.
And they're comprised of agents and analysts from the FBI,
Secret Service, US Marshals and officers from the Department of Homeland Security.
The goal is to target any and every financial service provider
that's helping the Russian oligarchs launder money and evade economic sanctions.
The DOJ describes KleptoCapture as an interagency law enforcement task force
dedicated to enforcing the sweeping sanctions,
export restrictions,
and economic countermeasures that the United States has imposed,
along with allies and partners,
in response to Russia's unprovoked military invasion of Ukraine.
And then we have the US and UK also going after the US financial investments of the oligarchs.
UK authorities freezing the US hedge fund investments
that were made by Roman Abramovich.
He, of course, is the high-profile billionaire
who was sanctioned in the UK and Canada in recent days.
Officials say he invested what could be billions of dollars
through an unregistered investment firm based in Tarrytown, New York,
called Concord Management.
Now, Abramovich's hedge funds include some big names,
Millstreet Capital, Empyrean, Millennium and Sculptor Capital.
Some funds like Brevan Howard now saying they will return Concord's investment.
Abramovich had been trying to sell his hedge fund investments in recent weeks.
Sources telling me Abramovich also has large holdings of US stocks.
Unclear though what vehicles he may have used.
Concord did not respond to request for comment.
But, guys, remember,
the Russian rich have more than $800 billion stashed overseas.
I would bet most of that is in private equity,
hedge funds, stocks and other US market investments.
So this story is just beginning.
If you know anything about Russian elites or Vladimir Putin's inner circle,
then I'm sure you've come across the name Roman Abramovich,
the former governor of Chukotka and owner of Chelsea Football Club.
He's one of seven Russian billionaires that has had their assets frozen
in an attempt to prevent them helping with the war.
Abramovich,
who makes the Penguin look like an upstanding citizen,
for sheer criminal genius
none surpasses my most recent ornithologically inspired entitlement
started making his money in 1995 through a rigged auction
where he purchased a Russian oil company Sibneft for $250 million.
He sold Sibneft back to the Russian government for $13 billion in 2005.
The Russian authorities have been wanting to charge him for fraud for years,
but he's practically untouchable
since he's been in Putin's inner circle at the Kremlin for over two decades.
Of course, Roman has denied ever having close ties with Putin.
But The Guardian reports that he was targeted by the UK's government
since he has effective control of a steel company, Evraz PLC,
that supplied steel to the Russian military to produce tanks.
But trust me, they're definitely not friends.
The EU has been seizing his assets including a superyacht,
and he was last seen boarding a plane in Israel headed to Istanbul.
He better watch his back.
KleptoCapture is on the move.
And they won't stop until they seize all the superyachts they can find.
Next up, crypto exchange FTX took another step closer to crypto mass adoption today
by becoming the first exchange to receive a license to operate in Dubai.
CoinDesk reports the FTX's license comes a week after Dubai announced
the creation of Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority.
This independent authority will be responsible for governing the crypto sector in Dubai.
Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates tweeted,
"The Authority will cooperate with all related entities
to ensure maximum transparency and security for investors."
Their goal is to establish the UAE and Dubai's position
as a key player in designing the future of virtual assets globally.
FTX isn't the only one getting their foot in the door in the untapped Middle Eastern crypto market.
Ethereum is seeing a lot of movement the past week
in the recent valuation of ConsenSys shaking up the crypto world.
Just last year,
ConsenSys was valued at around $3 billion,
but a recent Series D round of funding pulled in $450 million.
In case you didn't know,
ConsenSys is an Ethereum developer and own several crypto projects
including MetaMask.
This is all coming together as the NFT ecosystem is starting to mature
and the merge to ETH 2.0 is looming sometime later this year,
maybe over the summer.
ConsenSys has positioned itself to be the major player in the Ethereum ecosystem
and are already forging partnerships across Silicon Valley.
This is very bullish news for Ethereum
and is a sneak peek at what might happen to the price of Ethereum
when it finally moves to proof-of-stake.
Comment below with your favorite NFT project.
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That's all I got.
Be blessed.
BitBoy out.