Crypto exchange HTX has rejected UK allegations that it aided Russia’s “illicit financial infrastructure” used to move funds and support the country’s war in Ukraine, saying it had refused a request to list ruble stablecoin A7A5.
“A7A5 was attempting to list their stablecoin. However, following our rigorous internal due diligence and compliance review processes, their application was explicitly rejected,” an HTX spokesperson told CoinDesk.
The token’s issuer, A7 LLC, is already sanctioned by many Western governments.
In a sanctions memo released Tuesday, the Foreign Ministry did not provide any specific evidence of any cooperation with the HTX-A7A5. The ministry said it had “reasonable grounds to suspect” that HTX was assisting A7, which the UK said “operates in a sector of strategic importance to the Russian government”.
“We contacted all major CEXs several months ago in order to list A7A5, including HTX,” Oleg Ogienko, director of A7A5, told CoinDesk, using crypto terminology for centralized exchanges. “But all of them rejected our request almost immediately because they feared secondary sanctions.”
Ogienko said he was willing to work with centralized exchanges and that HTX’s refusal to list the Russian stablecoin was “bad for them.”
“Now we no longer need their listing, because our business model runs on DeFi infrastructure,” he told CoinDesk. “Nevertheless, we are open to interaction with CEXs if they want to increase their actual trading volume and attract good customers.”
In an interview with CoinDesk during the Hong Kong Consensus conference earlier this year, Ogienko said he was there to meet with projects and protocols to discuss cooperation and business development.
Ogienko said the A7A5 is fully compliant with Kyrgyz and Russian regulations as well as the principles set out by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which fights money laundering and the financing of terrorism and proliferation worldwide.
“We are not violating any legislation,” he said.
