Wex Co-founder Joins the Fight to Reduce the Sentence and Return Crypto Assets

The co-founder of the Wex crypto exchange, Alexey Ivanov (known until 2022 as Bilyuchenko), appealed to the Moscow City Court with a request for a reduction in punishment and the unfreezing of frozen assets. Ivanov-Bilyuchenko was previously sentenced by the Meshchansky district court to 3.5 years in prison and a fine of 500,000 rubles for embezzlement of client assets worth 3.17 billion rubles.

At the court hearing on February 8, the defendant stated his desire to improve, referring to the execution of the judicial cooperation agreement and the presence of mitigating circumstances, and asked the court to reduce the sentence, as well as to cancel the seizure of property. He also mentioned that there are sufficient funds in the frozen accounts at Alfa-Bank to compensate for the damage.

The appeal hearing in the Moscow City Court was postponed to February 29, despite the fact that the first hearing on the appeal was scheduled for December 7 and postponed several times.

Ivanov-Bilyuchenko has been in custody since March 2022, but given the conversion of time spent in jail into time served in a colony, he may be released soon.

Back in September, Ivanov-Bilyuchenko asked for leniency, appealing to President Vladimir Putin and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu with a request to release him to the zone of a special military operation.

The aggrieved party, represented by representatives of the World Exchange Services company, registered in Singapore, is actively involved in the lawsuit. The current owners of the company do not agree with the amount of damage assigned and estimate it not at 3.17 billion, but at 16 billion rubles.

The court case is causing a significant public outcry, especially given the defendant's connection with well-known businessmen and the large BTC-e crypto platform, which ceased operations in 2018 after the intervention of American law enforcement agencies.