Russian FinTech A7 Allegedly Moved More Than $6.9 Billion Through Global Banks

A Financial Times investigation says A7, a Kremlin-backed FinTech built as an alternative to western payment systems, moved more than $6.9 billion through the global banking system despite sanctions on Russia. For PSPs, acquiring teams, and correspondent banks, the point is not the headline amount alone — it is the combination of forged paperwork, front companies, and SWIFT access.

1. The FT said A7 relied on what it called “old-fashioned money laundering” to move funds through the banking system, using a network of front companies and existing businesses to make payments via SWIFT. The report is based on hundreds of A7 files obtained by the newspaper.
2. According to the investigation, A7 obscured the use of those companies through an “industrial-scale forgery operation” that produced counterfeit invoices. In other words, the payment flow was not hidden by fancy routing; it was hidden by paperwork that looked real enough to pass through banks until it did not.
3. The report said A7 held accounts with Standard Chartered, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup. All three pointed to their commitment to anti-money laundering (AML) controls and declined to comment further, according to the FT.
4. A7 was established by Ilan Shor, a Moldovan oligarch, with backing from Russia’s Promsvyazbank, a state-owned bank with close ties to the defense sector. The Kremlin has promoted A7 as Russia’s leading cross-border import payments provider since Russian banks were cut off from SWIFT after the invasion of Ukraine.
5. The FT said front companies arranged cash deposits at banks within the SWIFT system, which then could be used to pay bills overseas for Russian companies. More than half of these flows ended up in Chinese bank accounts, according to the report.

Zach Tvarozna, a former American government banking analyst who wrote about A7 in a report published by the Open Source Center, said the new data shows “the true scale of A7’s money-laundering network is much bigger than anyone had previously realized.” He added that the material “should make us think again about how hard it is to keep traditional correspondent banking clean.”