A7’s $6.9bn payments trail shows how sanctions screening gaps get exploited

A7, a Russia-linked cross-border payments network, moved billions of dollars through major international banks while disguising transactions as ordinary trade. For PSPs, acquirers and correspondent banks, the uncomfortable part is not the scale alone — it is how many institutions touched the flow before the screening systems, or the people running them, decided anything was wrong.

1. A Financial Times investigation, based on leaked internal documents, traced about $6.9bn in payments involving A7-linked entities between late 2024 and August 2025. Those flows went through accounts at Standard Chartered ($1.1bn through Hong Kong), First Abu Dhabi Bank (more than $1.8bn across 17 entities), DBS ($273m), Citigroup ($74m) and Deutsche Bank ($18m).
2. A7 was established in 2024 by Promsvyazbank (PSB), a Russian state-owned lender with close ties to the defence sector, and Moldovan oligarch Ilan Mironovich Shor. The network operates through three central entities — A7 LLC, A71 LLC and A7 Agent LLC — and, according to the investigation, an extensive structure of shell companies and financial intermediaries spanning at least 83 countries and approximately 435 financial institutions.
3. One front company registered in Kyrgyzstan accounted for approximately $2.4bn in transactions. More than $2bn in export earnings linked to Russian oil company Rosneft was also reportedly channelled through at least 16 trading businesses, which gives a sense of how this kind of network can sit inside apparently normal trade flows.
4. The US government says the activity was larger still. FinCEN estimates that A7 sub-agents processed more than $17bn in dollar-denominated transactions between January 2025 and June 2026, including payments associated with Iranian oil sales and weapons procurement. US filings also put the network’s overall transaction volume above 7.5 trillion roubles, or approximately $91.5bn; the source text notes that this covers a different period and measure than the Financial Times figure, so the numbers should not be combined.
5. According to the investigation, the network made payments look like routine international trade: transactions generally sat in the mid-to-high six-figure range, supporting invoices referred to consumer products, equipment and commodities, and military-related goods such as night-vision equipment were reportedly described as “hardened glass” in export documentation. A7 also allegedly used counterfeit stamps, seals and document templates, changed restricted Harmonised System (HS) codes to unrestricted alternatives, and extended its operations beyond traditional banking through A7A5, a rouble-backed stablecoin issued by affiliated company Old Vector LLC.

Regulatory pressure caught up on October 1, 2026, when the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated A7 as a significant transnational criminal organisation under Executive Order 13581. The action blocked property belonging to A7 LLC, A7 Agent LLC and Old Vector LLC, which is the part compliance teams usually care about once the name finally lands in the screening queue.