Crypto Exchange Bitzlato Restores Access to User Funds – Customers who have deposited funds with Bitzlato can immediately begin withdrawing their coins, according to a Telegram message from the recently seized crypto exchange. The announcement comes after the trading platform remained inaccessible for more than a month.
The Hong Kong-registered exchange, more known to Russian-speaking traders, was shut down in January after French officials took control of its website and their US colleagues detained its co-founder Anatoly Legkodymov. According to the US Justice Department, Bitzlato has processed more than $700 million in cash from illegal entities such as the darknet market Hydra and the Russian crypto pyramid scam Finiko.
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According to Europol, it exchanged more than $1 billion in illegal funds. “We were gone for 42 long days, but we are back. A lot of work has been done to ensure that your data is safe and the coins are in your wallets,” Bitzlato said in the post. It also insisted it had been used as “a bargaining chip in backstage games.”
Four more members of its staff, including three executives, were arrested in European countries in late January. Anton Shkurenko, the other Bitzlato co-founder, was briefly detained, questioned, then released by Russian authorities in February.
Previously, Shkurenko stated in a YouTube video that Bitzlato aims to relocate to Russia and resume operations and withdrawals from there. He also stated that French investigators had confiscated Bitzlato’s hot wallet, which contained more than a third of its assets, and that the withdrawals would be partial at first.
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