Lithuanian national Aleksej Besciokov wanted by US for crypto-linked money laundering arrested in Kerala | Thiruvananthapuram News

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A 46-year-old Lithuanian national by the US Department of Justice , who was wanted, was arrested by Varkala police on charges of financial fraud that were committed in the United States of America.
The arrested is Aleksej Besciokov, co-founder of Garantex, a cryptocurrency exchange sanctioned by the U.S. government in 2022.
He was arrested on Tuesday evening at the coastal town while vacationing with his family. According to police, he had facilitated tens of billions of dollars in money laundering by transnational criminal and cybercriminal organizations.
On March 7, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) unsealed an indictment against Besciokov and the other alleged co-founder of Garantex, Aleksandr Mira Serda, 40, a Russian national living in the United Arab Emirates.
B Gopakumar, Varkala DySP, confirmed to the TOI that the Varkala police have been given a direction from the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate of Patiala House court to apprehend him. ” We were given an instruction from the Patiala court. So we traced the accused and took him into custody.
There was also a directive from the Interpol too. As per the procedure, he will be remanded here for two days and he will be sent to Patiala for further interrogation and investigation proceedings. Later, he will be taken to the US, ” Gopakumar said.
Mira Serda and Besciokov are charged with money laundering conspiracy, and Besciokov is charged with conspiracy to violate sanctions and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business.
Sources said that , between 2019 and 2025, Besciokov and Mira Serda controlled and operated Garantex. Besciokov was Garantex’s primary technical administrator and responsible for obtaining and maintaining critical Garantex infrastructure, as well as reviewing and approving transactions.
Garantex received hundreds of millions in criminal proceeds and was used to facilitate various crimes, including hacking, ransomware, terrorism, and drug trafficking, often with substantial impact to U.S. victims.