Economic sanctions have been imposed on Cryptomus by the United Kingdom, which characterizes the cryptocurrency platform as a key channel for payments linked to ransomware, narcotics and darknet markets serving Russia.
Assets Cryptomus holds at UK banks are frozen under the October 8 action, and British firms are now barred from transacting with it. VexPay, TokenSpot and Tsunami Payments were also caught up in the same measures.
Since its 2022 debut the company has rebranded multiple times, adopting the name Heleket after Canada fined it CAD $176 million over anti-money laundering shortcomings.
According to blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis, the designations strike at the broader infrastructure sustaining Russia’s wartime economy. Chainalysis added that, measured across tracked categories, Cryptomus and Heleket combined absorbed more illicit funds than the mixers in its dataset, and that illicit counterparties jumped beyond 900 within a single month in late 2025.
TRM Labs reached a similar conclusion in April: more than $7 billion had flowed through the platform since launch, some of it tied to child sexual abuse material vendors, terrorist financing and human trafficking. Once the platform rolled out know-your-customer requirements, that volume fell off sharply.
A payment processor is not put out of business by sanctions, but it is severed from the banking system and from legitimate customers in the jurisdictions imposing them.
