NCA cracks multi-billion dollar Russian money laundering networks

Operation Destabilise: NCA disrupts $multi-billion Russian money laundering networks with links to, drugs, ransomware and espionage, resulting in 84 arrests.

An international NCA-led investigation – Operation Destabilise – has exposed and disrupted Russian money laundering networks. All supporting serious and organised crime around the world: spanning from the streets of the UK, to the Middle East, Russia, and South America.

Investigators identified two Russian-speaking networks collaborating at the heart of the criminal enterprise; Smart and TGR.

Operation Destabilise revealed today (4 December) as the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced sanctions. These against the Russian-speaking men and women at the head of these networks, as well as four businesses linked to TGR.

A seventh individual, a global money laundering facilitator with strong links to one of the networks, also arrested by the NCA’s international partners.

As well as enabling UK-based criminals, Smart and TGR used their global reach to launder money. This for transnational crime groups such as the Kinahans. The notorious family-run crime syndicate, responsible for trafficking drugs and firearms into the UK and around the world, were sanctioned by the US in 2022.

They also helped Russian clients to illegally bypass financial restrictions to invest money in the UK, threatening the integrity of our economy. From late 2022 to summer 2023 the Smart network was used to fund Russian espionage operations.