The US Treasury has designated Russia's A7 Network a significant transnational criminal organization and proposed a rule that would prohibit American financial institutions — including crypto exchanges — from processing transfers involving the network's front companies, covering both fiat and convertible virtual currency.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) listed the network on Thursday with addresses in Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria and Zimbabwe. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) separately proposed a transmittal-of-funds prohibition against what it calls the network's Sub-Agents, the companies used to disguise sanctioned payments as ordinary trade.

FinCEN says more than 180 entities moved at least $179.1 billion in the network's ruble-backed A7A5 token between February 2025 and June 2026. Treasury says Iran and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have used the network to evade sanctions under what it calls Operation Economic Outcast.

"If you facilitate illicit finance for America's adversaries, you will lose access to the U.S. financial system," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said.

Why the sixth special measure?

FinCEN is acting under Section 9714 of the Combating Russian Money Laundering Act, which offers six special measures. It picked the sixth — a transmittal-of-funds prohibition — over the fifth, which restricts correspondent accounts.

That choice matters for crypto. Blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs, based on its research into the network, notes that A7A5 transactions move entirely outside correspondent banking and that FinCEN considers them integral to the business model. A correspondent-account restriction would have left that gap open. The sixth measure reaches fiat and crypto alike, and would bind roughly 348,000 institutions.

What is A7A5?

A7A5 is a ruble-backed token issued by Kyrgyz-registered Old Vector, live on Tron and Ethereum, with deposits held at Promsvyazbank, Russia's state-owned defense bank. FinCEN describes a mirror system: tokens move between addresses inside Russia to represent payments abroad, while Sub-Agents make matching fiat transfers in dollars, yuan, dirhams and euros — the two sides firewalled from each other.

Historically almost all A7A5 volume flowed through the sanctioned exchanges Garantex and Grinex, FinCEN found. The token most often serves as a non-freezable bridge into USDT and then fiat. Since a reported hack at Grinex in April, supply has consolidated into unhosted wallets, which the agency reads as a possible shift away from sanctioned venues.

On the fiat side, A7 has created or acquired hundreds of Sub-Agents holding accounts at about 435 financial institutions across at least 83 countries, processing more than $17 billion between January 2025 and June 2026. Staff run those accounts from Moscow over custom VPNs that make activity appear to originate in Dubai, Hong Kong or Bishkek, according to FinCEN.

What are the network's Iran and North Korea links?

Treasury documented several direct connections:

• One Sub-Agent dealt with entities tied to Iran's shadow fleet of tankers and, together with a sister company, received close to $140 million from firms involved in Iranian sanctions evasion.
• Another sent about $1.6 million to a company linked to weapons procurement.
• Treasury ties the network to Nobitex, the Iranian exchange it designated in June, and to laundering proceeds from North Korean exchange hacks.

The network launched in September 2024, founded by fugitive Moldovan oligarch Ilan Shor together with Promsvyazbank, and by January claimed to handle more than 2,000 transactions a day. Its stated historical volume of 7.5 trillion rubles — about $91.5 billion — would equal roughly an eighth of Russia's foreign trade last year. The EU has sanctioned parts of the network previously, and the UK's National Crime Agency issued its own alert in August.

For US-facing exchanges and payment processors, the operational consequence is direct: once finalized, the rule would make any transmittal touching a listed Sub-Agent a prohibited transaction, extending compliance obligations deep into on-chain settlement paths that correspondent-banking rules never reached. The comment period closes 30 days after the rule appears in the Federal Register.