According to local news, the Russian government seized $10 million worth of Bitcoin from Tambiev, a former law enforcement official. The incident occurred within the framework of a major cryptocurrency bribery case. Russian court bailiffs initiated the process to obtain Bitcoin from Tambiev, a former employee of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation (ICRF).

Officers began seizing crypto assets from Tambiev, valued at 1 billion Russian rubles (about $10 million) and representing approximately 103 BTC. Tambiev was convicted of cryptocurrency bribery in 2023.

According to the TASS news agency on January 8, 2024, this transaction was carried out through Ledger Nano X, Tambiev’s hardware wallet of the Russian government. However, local sources pointed out that 103 BTC only constituted 4% of the total amount of the bribe.

This incident reveals that Tambiev has been involved in a major bribery scandal in recent years and has caused a great repercussion in the cryptocurrency world. In 2024, a Russian court sentenced Tambiev to 16 years in prison for accepting a bribe of 2,718 BTC.

This amount is worth approximately 258 million dollars. According to local news agency RBC, this case was recorded as the largest bribery case in Russian history. The court ruled that the 1,032 BTC seized from Tambiev was also acquired with unverified income.

Tambiev was arrested in March 2022. Bailiffs found private keys to Tambiev’s Bitcoin wallet on his computer. These keys were located in a folder called “Retirement”.

The court and bailiffs determined that Tambiev received thousands of BTC from a hacker group called the Infraud Organization. The group, which included Infraud members, Kazakh citizens Mark and Konstantin Bergman, and Estonian citizen Kirill Samokutyaev, bribed Tambiev to influence various transactions.

In this huge bribery incident, it was revealed that former ICRF employees also took bribes and made various collaborations in exchange for protecting hackers. According to investigations, the bribes were made in exchange for stopping the prosecution of hackers and hiding their crypto assets. According to TASS, the value of these hidden crypto assets amounts to 14 billion rubles (about $138 million).

This case reveals how complex the fight against illegal transactions related to cryptocurrency has become in Russia and how such crimes have turned into large-scale bribery networks.

Tambiev’s case also constitutes an important indicator of how the cryptocurrency industry in Russia and the fight against illegal activities will develop. It also reveals that such scandals lead to punishment not only of individual criminals, but also of criminals who infiltrated the economic system of a state.