FBI director believes that Russia can’t use crypto to bypass US sanctions

The Federal Bureau of Investigation or FBI has played an important role in creating the regulatory framework for crypto in the United States. The director of the agency, Christopher Wray said that the U.S. is capable of blocking efforts to use crypto for sanctions evasion, resulting in fiat becoming a better avenue for Russia to potentially do so.

During a hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence this Thursday, Martin Heinrich, a New Mexico Senator asked the FBI director what if Russia responds to the economic impact of the U.S. banning imports of the country’s oil and gas by using gold reserves, China’s CBDC, or crypto. Wray replied that the FBI and its partners have built up a “significant expertise” on crypto, citing the department’s recent action of seizing large amounts of tokens as evidence, hence, leading to vulnerabilities while using crypto to evade sanctions.

He went on to add that, “The Russians’ ability to circumvent the sanctions with cryptocurrency is probably highly overestimated on the part of maybe them and others.” Wray talked about the potential involvement of fiat by saying:

“We are, as a community and with our partners overseas, far more effective on that than I think that sometimes they appreciate and there’s a lot of expertise in terms of tools and strategies to help block that kind of effort. Ultimately, what they really need to do is get access to some form of fiat currency, which becomes more challenging.”

Would Russia use crypto to evade sanctions?

As TheCoinRise reported, the European Central Bank (ECB) is also seeking approval for a crypto-related regulatory framework to prevent Russia from evading sanctions. Moreover, the United States has also included crypto in its list of sanctions on the Russian government following a series of devastating sanctions already put forward.

Avril Haines, the Director of National Intelligence, noted that Russian President Vladimir Putin had most certainly anticipated sanctions as a result of his activities against Ukraine and had set aside funds to minimize the economic impact. However, she claimed that sanctions imposed by the US Treasury Department and other international governments on Russia had made it difficult to access the funds.