Russia’s biggest crypto exchange in court: arrest, article 172, and a likely article 210 next

The largest crypto exchange in Russia was in court today, and the immediate outcome was arrest and remand in pre-trial detention. For high-risk payment operators, the useful part is not the drama but the sequence: once law enforcement moves from a business dispute to article 172 and then, very possibly, article 210, the case stops looking like a one-off and starts looking like a structural risk event.

1. According to Sergey Mendeleev, the court has arrested his friend and “Teacher,” whom he described as an old-timer in crypto and one of the people around the early days of Garantex. Mendeleev said he had wanted to prove that crypto in Russia could be traded openly, without hiding names behind nicknames in closed chats.
2. The source says “172” has already happened, referring to article 172, and that the person is now in pre-trial detention, or SIZO. It also says there is a high probability that article 210 will follow later. In practical terms, that is the difference between a case about specific conduct and a case that starts to look like organized-crime framing.
3. Mendeleev’s quoted conclusion was blunt: “This time is over. Shut down. That’s all from me.” For anyone running a high-risk payments business, the signal is simple: when a major local crypto venue is hit at this level, bank partners and PSPs tend to reassess exposure fast, because the compliance conversation changes from onboarding to containment.