A BRITISH teenager has been personally sanctioned by Vladimir Putin for exposing an illicit cryptocurrency network in Russia.
Alexander Browder, 17 – believed to be the youngest person ever targeted by the ‘s sanctions regime – learnt about his fate on Wednesday, while still in economics class.
Alexander Browder is the son of Sir Bill Browder, a renowned human-rights activist and co-founder of Hermitage Capital Management Credit: Linkedin
Vladimir Putin attends a meeting with his Tanzania’s counterpart at the Kremlin in Moscow Credit: AFP
The foreign ministry accused the sixth-former of “circulating defamatory speculations and false information about the policy of authorities”.
Russia sanctioned Browder on Tuesday after he wrote a report for a think-tank exposing how cash was being laundered via the Ruble-backed A7A5 – yet he sees it as a “badge of honour.”
He told The Times that sanctions “don’t intimidate” him. Instead, it shows that he has “touched a nerve” with his work.
“It has only made me more excited to try and expose more of this,” the teen added.
In a statement on X, he said: “The Russian government has just announced that I have been added to their sanctions list for my work exposing their sanctions evading cryptocurrency A7A5…
“[I am] Proud to be the first high school student in the world to ever be sanctioned by an authoritarian regime for uncovering corruption.”
Along with four other British nationals, Browder will now be banned from entering .
His report, titled “Confronting the Illicit-Finance Hydra in Crypto Markets: Protecting Retail Investors and Disrupting Hostile Government Exploitation,” was published by the Henry Jackson Society think-tank in March.
In it, he lifted the lid on how $350 billion had been laundered by various states including Russia, Iran and .
The schoolboy added that A7A5 – a type of digital currency designed to hold a stable value by pegging to fiat currencies – was “one of the most prevalent issues facing the West” in the fight against laundering.
The UK Foreign Office has accused Russia of using tokens like A7A5 in an effort to evade Western sanctions and help fund its military.
The British government announced in May a series of sanctions against individuals linked to the network behind A7A5, which it said claimed to have moved more than $90 billion last year.
As the son of Sir Bill Browder, a renowned human-ights activist and co-founder of Hermitage Capital Management, the teenager admitted that fighting atrocities was “in my genetics”.
His father, a British-American who has been banned from Russia since 2005, has spent decades exposing Kremlin corruption and pioneered the global Magnitsky Act which freezes Russian officials’ offshore wealth.
In “War Files”, The Sun’s new YouTube show, Sir Bill revealed that Putin is in his “weakest position” since the start of his leadership.
“Right now, Putin is,” Browder said. “He is so scared that someone internally or someone externally will kill him that he is hiding underground in a bunker.
“He is not going to his house in Valdai, or his house on the Black Sea – he is underground.
“That tells you how desperate the situation has gotten for him.”
Eze Chidiebere Paul
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