Moscow Court Arrests Three Alleged Organizers of a 30 Billion Ruble Transfer Scheme Through Qiwi Wallets

Moscow’s Meshchansky Court on June 25 ordered the arrest of three people accused of moving more than 30 billion rubles out of Russia through Qiwi payment systems. For high-risk PSPs, the important detail is not the courtroom drama but the mechanism: more than 24,000 Qiwi wallets allegedly registered to nominees, then used for cross-border transfers and illicit online activity.

1. According to Kommersant, the defendants are Grigory Kisilgoff and Denis Li, heads of the Intercom group, and Alexander Mikhalychuk, a beneficiary of a terminal business and a network of padel clubs in Moscow and St. Petersburg. The court’s arrest decision was issued on June 25, while all three were reported to be outside Russia.
2. Investigators say that in 2022–2023 the group registered more than 24,000 Qiwi wallets in the names of front persons, using stolen personal data. Those wallets were then used to move more than 30 billion rubles abroad.
3. The same wallets were also allegedly used for illegal online casinos, bookmakers, drug trafficking, and crypto exchange. In other words, this was not a single-use payment rail abuse case; it was a multi-vertical cash-out and settlement layer.
4. All three organizers have been charged under part 2 of Article 187 and points “a” and “b” of part 3 of Article 193.1 of the Russian Criminal Code: illegal turnover of payment instruments by an organized group, and currency operations using forged documents by an organized group on an especially large scale.
5. Investigators also claim that the drop accounts were verified in person, with nominees coming to the offices of Kisilgoff, Li, and Mikhalychuk. That detail matters because it shows how identity checks can be operationalized when a scheme depends on a large pool of seemingly normal wallets rather than a few obvious mule accounts.

The broader regulatory backdrop is already familiar. Russian authorities began tightening against anonymous e-wallets in 2019: cash withdrawals were banned first, then top-ups, and later the Central Bank blocked transfers from Qiwi wallets to anonymous cards and foreign merchants. On February 21, 2024, the Central Bank revoked the license of Qiwi Bank, the operator behind the Qiwi wallet system, citing involvement in high-risk operations tied to underground business, including illegal online casinos, bookmakers, crypto exchangers, and money laundering. In April 2025, the Deposit Insurance Agency said it had finished settlements with Qiwi Bank creditors; total claims exceeded 20 billion rubles. On November 17, 2025, the court completed the liquidation of Qiwi Bank.