In March 2022, the Estonian FIU forced Russian-controlled Garantex Europe OÜ d/b/a Garantex to surrender its crypto license due to money laundering issues with Russia. However, many other FIU-licensed crypto payment processors controlled by Russians engage in illegal activities. One is the notorious scam facilitator and merchant service provider Payeer OÜ d/b/a Payeer, which apparently makes most of its transactions with customers from Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine to date. Payeer is also notorious as a scam facilitator.
The Website Traffic
According to the latest Similarweb statistics, visitors from these countries account for about 50% of Payeer website traffic. In June 2022, the website received 4.9 million visits with an average duration of almost 6 minutes. These are impressive numbers.
The Legal Entities
Until March 2022, the Estonian entity Fincana OÜ was the co-operator of Payeer alongside Paycporp Limited on Vanuatu. After the publication of a FinTelegram report, Fincana was swapped for Payeer OÜ, licensed by the FIU since March 2021.
The client agreement states that the Estonian entity provides crypto services while payment services (merchant services) are provided by the Vanuatu entity Paycorp Limited.
Scam Facilitator
The crypto and fiat payment processor Payeer was a payment facilitators for broker scams such as FXTradePremium, Capital Letter,the Vanuatu entity Paycorp Limited provides payment services (merchant services) FXTradePremiums, Deal Trade, Optimus Markets, Spintop Capital and others.
Beneficial Owners
At Payeer OÜ, the Russian Liubov Svezhentseva (see passport on the right) used to be registered as a director alongside the Estonian Dmitri Allikas. Since April 2022, Estonian Ivan Abramov is the only registered nominee director. This guy holds several dozen positions in Estonian companies. Among others, he has been a director of the vanished crypto payment processor MisterBit. According to the information available, the Russian is either the direct beneficial owner, or she holds the shares in trust for other Russians.