The US Treasury has designated A7, a Russian payment network, as a significant transnational criminal organisation, saying its front companies processed more than $17 billion between January 2025 and June 2026.
The action, announced on Thursday, has three parts. The Office of Foreign Assets Control made the designation. FinCEN proposed a rule that would bar US financial institutions, crypto exchanges included, from handling transfers involving A7’s foreign sub-agents, and issued an alert listing red flags for spotting them.
The crypto element is A7A5, a ruble-backed token issued by Kyrgyz-registered Old Vector on Tron and Ethereum. FinCEN says more than 180 entities moved at least $179.1 billion in it between February 2025 and June 2026.
Treasury ties the network to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, oil smuggling and weapons procurement. A7 was set up in 2024 by Promsvyazbank, Russia’s state defence bank, with Ilan Shor, the fugitive Moldovan politician who owns a majority stake. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called it part of the effort to isolate Iran’s financial enablers.
A7 categorically rejected any link to Iran or terrorist groups, the Moscow Times reported, and said it serves legitimate import and export trade.
The US had already sanctioned A7 entities over the token in 2025. This step aims lower down, at the hundreds of apparently independent companies that put their names on contracts and invoices in place of the real customer, which is what lets the payments slip through ordinary correspondent banking.
The open question is reach. Treasury’s own figures cover a period when the token was already a known target, and a designation cannot freeze a token whose issuer sits outside US jurisdiction.
The FinCEN rule is also still a proposal, with 30 days for comment once it is published.
