Felix Medvedev, a Russian citizen living in the United States, was accused of money laundering and doing business without a license, the US Department of Justice said in a statement.

“Medvedev allegedly used the US banking system to illegally transfer more than $150 million. This kind of criminal activity poses a serious threat to the integrity of our financial system,” said US Attorney Ryan Buchanan.

Medvedev, 41, who lives in the state of Georgia, registered eight companies there to transfer the above amount in a series of 1.3 thousand transactions from several bank accounts. The companies did not have standard business expenses and employees. Part of the money, $65 million, went to buy foreign gold bars, the prosecutor said.

In April, US authorities arrested Belarusian citizen Sergei Karpushkin from Miami on charges of participating in a $150 million scheme to circumvent anti-Russian sanctions. bypassing American sanctions imposed on the oligarch Sergei Kurchenko” – they purchased steel-smelting materials for the above-mentioned amount for two “Kurchenko-related” companies.

Kurchenko is a citizen of Ukraine. After the Euromaidan, he moved to Belarus and then to Russia. According to the Security Service of Ukraine, he received Russian citizenship in violation of Ukrainian law. Under President Viktor Yanukovych, Kurchenko was one of the richest people in Ukraine and was considered one of the country’s largest hydrocarbon traders. He has been under Western sanctions since April 2022.