At a glance

  • The UK government on Thursday, 8 Oct, sanctioned three crypto exchanges, two payment platforms and one individual as part of a 38-designation Russia package, according to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO).
  • The FCDO says two of the platforms processed or facilitated transactions with A7, a network the US Treasury sanctioned a week earlier; it did not say which two.

The FCDO announcement says it suspects the targeted entities “are being used by Russia to circumvent financial sanctions”. Three of them are linked to Kyrgyzstan, it adds.

The names are on the UK sanctions notice dated 8 Oct. Xeltox Enterprises Ltd, a company registered in British Columbia, Canada, is listed for supporting the Russian financial services sector “through its ownership of CRYPTOMUS and activities linked to and continued via HELEKET”. The entry carries Cryptomus, Heleket and Certa Payments Ltd as name variations.

TokenSpot CJSC and Tsunami Payments LLC, both with Bishkek addresses, are listed on the same ground, as is Joint Stock Company Planeta, a Russian entity. OJSC Processing KG, whose listing names Kyrgyzstan’s Ministry of Finance as its parent company and carries the website vexpay.net, is listed on a different ground: carrying on business “of economic significance to the Government of Russia”. Its director, Ulan Bukabaev, is listed too.

The notice does not label each entity as an exchange or a payment platform. TRM Labs, a blockchain-analytics firm, lists the same crypto and payments names in its own summary.

What the listings do

Each entity entry carries an asset freeze, which bars UK persons from dealing with the listed party’s funds or making funds available to it. UK credit and financial institutions are also barred from correspondent banking relationships with a designated person and from processing payments to, from or via it. Under the internet-services measure, social media services, internet access providers and app stores “must take reasonable steps” to stop UK users reaching the listed sites and apps.

For crypto firms, that means screening every brand a listing names, not just the company name.

The A7 link

The US Treasury sanctioned the A7 Network on 1 Oct as a significant transnational criminal organization, and its financial-crimes unit FinCEN proposed a rule to bar US transmittals involving A7’s “sub-agents”. Treasury says A7 claimed more than $91.5 billion in transaction volume as of January. The FCDO’s own figure is more than $90 billion for last year.

TRM Labs says its on-chain data shows TokenSpot sent $679.5 million to A7 and received $48.5 million from it between December 2023 and September 2026, and that it assessed on 6 Oct that TokenSpot shares wallet infrastructure with Grinex, a sanctioned exchange. TRM also says Cryptomus and Heleket are operationally linked. Those are TRM’s assessments, not findings in the UK notice. We have not independently verified TRM’s figures.

Canada’s financial-intelligence agency fined Xeltox almost C$177 million in October 2025, and Xeltox is appealing, TRM says.

We have not asked the named firms for comment.

Related coverage on stablecoins and sanctions pressure: Tether in Iran, and the Senate letter to Cantor Fitzgerald about Tether.

What happens next

The US comment period on FinCEN’s A7 proposal runs for 30 days from its 5 Oct Federal Register publication, so it should close on 4 Nov, according to Treasury’s description of the process. UK firms should screen against the updated sanctions list now. The EU’s own stablecoin rules are covered in ESMA’s non-MiCA stablecoin opinion.

This article is for information only and is not investment advice.