Major crypto exchange Binance challenged the accuracy of a report, which stated one of its regional heads agreed to supply Russia's financial intelligence unit with customer data potentially related to donations for anti-corruption and anti-Putin activist Alexei Navalny.
Reuters reported on Friday that Binance's head of Eastern Europe and Russia Gleb Kostarev met with officials from Russia's Rosfinmonitoring, a financial monitoring service linked to the country's Federal Security Service, or FSB, in April 2021. Kostarev reportedly agreed to a request from the government body to turn over certain user data — including names and addresses — later telling an associate he didn't have "much of a choice" in the matter. However, another unnamed crypto exchange reportedly did not agree to provide client data to Rosfinmonitoring due to concerns about how the information would be used as well as the unit's ties to the FSB.