Crypto
Home›Crypto›Market Structure›BitRiver founder Igor Runets moved to pretrial detenti…
BitRiver founder Igor Runets moved to pretrial detention over fraud charges
The case centers on allegations that an $8 million equipment contract was never fulfilled, leading to damages of more than 1 billion rubles, about $12.5 million.
A Russian court has ordered BitRiver founder Igor Runets to be transferred from house arrest to a pretrial detention facility to face large-scale fraud charges, according to CoinDesk and a report cited by Pravo.ru.
Investigators allege Runets failed to deliver crypto mining equipment under an $8 million contract with Infrastructure of Siberia, a subsidiary of En+, and that the nonperformance caused damages exceeding 1 billion rubles, about $12.5 million.
CoinDesk reports that Runets had previously been charged with tax evasion and that BitRiver has faced additional pressure as a six-year regional ban on crypto mining, along with insolvency proceedings, has destabilized the company’s Siberian data center operations.
BitRiver had expanded its operation from building its first Siberian mining data center in 2017 to 15 data centers with more than 175,000 servers, CoinDesk said, while insolvency proceedings against the controlling shareholder were opened in February.