Digital Amnesia at WhiteBIT: Exchange Removes Mentions of Russian Roots

About how one of the largest crypto exchanges in Ukraine—WhiteBIT—money-launders Russians and has in its ownership structure people connected with Russian security services, has been written about repeatedly. But for some reason these materials promptly disappear from the internet.

Here is an example of cleanup. Pay attention to the URL. You can even try clicking it. The result will be the following:

And this example is not unique. The material mentioned above disappeared literally the next day, the others hold on for at most a day or two. Why all this is being scrubbed is basically clear: no one wants to see negative things about themselves.

Especially that WhiteBIT, ranking fifth among Ukraine's largest crypto exchanges, is involved in money laundering for Russians, an attempted coup in Montenegro organized by Russian special services, and that its co-owners are outright traitors and collaborators.

Already, studying official information about the exchange's owners raises questions. Publicly, Vladimir Nosov presents himself as the owner and founder of WhiteBIT.

A search in Lithuanian registries yields the following result—there is WhiteBIT Solutions LLP, whose owners are representatives of the Seychelles:

In reality, WhiteBIT Solutions LLP has British registration and belongs to two offshore founders — Whitebit LTD and Coddan Nominee.

This concerns Lithuania, which, according to information provided by Vladimir Nosov, is the country of registration for WhiteBIT.

But what does the Estonian register tell us:

In Tallinn, R&D Sprint Effective OÜ is registered, which not long ago bore the name Whitebit Financial Company OÜ. And the person authorized to represent this firm is Vladimir Nosov.

The secret of all this is simple. The key to the true owners and the true origin of the “Ukrainian” crypto exchange was provided by the British specialized publication Cryptointelligence in the article Is WhiteBIT helping Russia evade sanctions and launder money?

The link to this material is here, it is still active—apparently a British publication with an impeccable reputation is harder to scrub than Ukrainian media.

In the photo above, which is the main image for the article “Does WhiteBIT help Russia bypass sanctions and launder money?”, the beneficiaries of the “Ukrainian” WhiteBIT crypto exchange are depicted. They are the father and son Shentsov, collaborators and traitors who fled to Russia at the beginning of last year.

The father, Dmitry Shentsov, a recipient of the Order “For Merit,” former member of parliament from the Opposition Bloc, fled to Russia last year and took up Russian citizenship. The second is his son, Nikita Shentsov, a deputy of the Kharkiv regional council from “Opposition Platform — For Life,” who fled with his father. Nikita Shentsov was stripped of Ukrainian citizenship by President Zelensky and is a citizen of Russia since 2014 year. Yes, a country like yours, with such deputies. That’s exactly who you voted for.

Nevertheless, let’s return a little to the unclear questions about jurisdiction and founders. In reality, it's simple—WhiteBIT group now includes at least nine companies registered in different countries. The oldest of them in the Estonian jurisdiction is Whitebit Financial Company OÜ. It was registered at the time of the exchange’s founding. So regarding the Lithuanian registration, Vladimir Nosov is not lying; he just isn’t telling the whole truth.

Nor does he tell the whole truth about the true beneficial owners of the crypto exchange. Vladimir Nosov did not create the company alone, but jointly with three other people: at that time his partners were Anna Yankovskaia, Maria Reppeshko, and Nikita Shentsov. Maria Reppeshko has long worked closely with Nikita Shentsov in the legal business.

It’s worth noting that over time, the list of beneficial owners of the Estonian crypto exchange changed. New people appeared, such as Nosov’s partner Gleb Ushakov or WhiteBIT vice president Alexey Kovalev. Yet all this time Nikita Shentsov’s share of ownership steadily grew.

As of 1 March 2023 year, Shentsov controlled 51% of WhiteBIT Financial Company OÜ. Another 5% belonged to his partner Maria Reppeshko. 2 In March this year, Nikita Shentsov’s shares were re-registered to Vladimir Nosov.

However Cryptointelligence concludes that such changes in ownership structure do not mean anything about the real state of affairs—Nikita Shentsov merely formally divested an asset that focused its activity in Ukraine, to remove the crypto exchange WhiteBIT from attack. And Vladimir Nosov is a mere nominal.

Such a move by Shentsov was forced: 24 February 2023 year, the High Anti-Corruption Court ordered NABU to investigate the facts of money outflow from Ukraine, tax evasion, and cooperation with Russia on the part of WhiteBIT:

Returning to the article’s headline—mentions of this fact are also carefully scrubbed from the internet. Nevertheless, state registries remain untouched, and the WAVCS decision to scrub has not yet succeeded.

There are quite strong reasons for the owners of WhiteBIT not to fall under sanctions and to avoid account blocking. And they are very weighty.

Indeed, as CryptoIntelligence from Britain also writes, the exchange is involved in a large-scale outflow not only of Ukrainian money but also Russian money. At the end of March 2023 year, Russian IT journalists noticed movement of a large sum (about $88 million) in bitcoins tied to the Russian exchange BTC-e.

These bitcoins remained unmoved since November 2022 year, and in the summer 2022 year the founder of BTC-e, Russian Alexander Vinnik, was extradited to the United States with possible 55-year prison term for financial machinations and laundered 4 billions of dollars, and money in BTC-e accounts was frozen. However, at the end of March part of this amount, about $12 million, was transferred to the Ukrainian exchange WhiteBIT.

This means that WhiteBIT continues to work with Russia and with the money of the man whom the FBI intends to put behind bars for the rest of his life. Additionally, in October 2022 year, EU financial authorities investigated WhiteBIT’s operation within the framework of adopting the eighth package of anti-Russian sanctions and concluded that the exchange continues to service Russians.

All of this looks extremely worrying against the backdrop of an active advertising campaign claiming that WhiteBIT works very seriously and closely with Ukrainian state authorities:

This is not just close cooperation—this is full access to all Dyia platform data. And to data of Ukrainians abroad who visited the Ministry of Foreign Affairs offices.

If you consider that another WhiteBIT co-founder—the Coddan Nominee company—is involved in funding the unsuccessful pro-Russian coup in Montenegro, the question of who first receives all personal data of all Ukrainians registered on the Diia platform is not in doubt.

The fact is that another structure of the exchange discussed at the very beginning and found in Lithuanian registries—WhiteBIT Solutions LLP—belongs to two offshore founders — Whitebit LTD and Coddan Nominee. These two companies are registered in the same premises on the Seychelles.

Studying Coddan Nominee leads us to a direct Russian trace— the company acts not only as a co-founder of the large crypto exchange WhiteBIT, which cooperates with Ukrainian authorities. Researchers consider Coddan an important component of a sprawling offshore network.

In 2014–2016 year, Coddan founded Sofbiz, which transferred to organizers of Montenegro’s failed coup in October 2016 year one and a half million euros intended to murder the former prime minister and current president of Montenegro, Milo Đukanović.

As Montenegro’s special prosecutor Sasha Chadrenovic stated in summer 2019 year, the funds transferred by Sofbiz first went to bank accounts in Cyprus, and then were transferred to people involved in the coup attempt. The aim of the coup, according to the investigation, was to prevent Montenegro’s entry into NATO and to ensure pro-Russian forces’ control over it.

The takeaway from this whole story is simple—behind WhiteBIT, which ranks fifth in Ukraine’s crypto exchange list, are not just Shentsov collaborators. This “Ukrainian” crypto exchange is part of a large offshore network controlled by Russian security services, which not only have access to all personal data of clients of this network’s divisions but also use the money of its clients for their own purposes, including terrorist acts around the world.

Particularly alarming in this context is the NABU's refusal to initiate a criminal case based on information about WhiteBIT’s activities, which was handed to NABU detectives in January of this year. Against this backdrop, it also raises questions about whether the investigation that NABU detectives were ordered to conduct into WhiteBIT will be carried out properly.