The privileged, privately educated Russian who ran a cash-to-crypto MLAAS for other wealthy Russians and drug traffickers

Semen Kuksov, son of Vladimir Kuksov, former chairman of AKROS, a leading Russian oil field service company, is one of the many privileged young Russians who came to the United Kingdom as a child to attend elite private schools and go on to university. Semen lived in a £1 million flat in Kensington, London until, in February 2024, he was sentenced to five years and seven months for money laundering. Kuksov held a “superintending role” in a cash-to-crypto money laundering as a service (MLAAS) operation that extended to France, Ireland, India, Australia and Dubai.

Later in the year, the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) revealed he was part of a multi-billion-pound Russian money laundering network working with drug traffickers, ransomware gangs and spies. The network operated in the UK, Middle East, Russia, and South America. It is connected to the Kinahan organized crime group, according to the NCA. UK authorities have since linked Kuksov to other criminal activities.

Semen Kuksov attended Charterhouse School and Queen Mary University, according to the transcript of his sentencing hearing obtained by Compliance Corylated. He is now 25 years old and serving the second year of a five-year and seven-month sentence for his “superintending” role running a cash and crypto money laundering operation with a former footballer and fitness instructor Andrii Dzektsa, a Ukrainian national.

Kuksov’s younger brother Alexander Kuksov was alleged to be part of the money laundering scheme. At just age 19, he was arrested in 2022, roughly a year before Semen Kuksov and Dzektsa’s arrest, court documents show, but to date no charges have been brought against him. The NCA and the Crown Prosecution Service press offices did not respond to a request for comment about Alexander.

During his sentencing hearing on February 1, 2024, the prosecution painted a picture of Semen Kuksov as the guiding mind of a criminal organization, communicating about deliveries and collections of cash, managing crypto transactions, organizing legal aid for gang members who had been arrested, and even seeking advice about filling out Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA) cash seizure forms.

Operation Destabilise

In his sentencing remarks Judge Edward Connell told Semen and Dzetktsa they are “both plainly part of a wider organised crime group”, and notes that some but not all members of that group, have been arrested. Later in the year, it would become clear that Semen Kuksov, his brother Alexander, and Dzektsa were part of much bigger “Russian money laundering networks” that were providing money laundering services to serious and organised crime “spanning from the streets of the UK, to the Middle East, Russia, and South America”.

In December 2024, the NCA announced it, alongside international law enforcement partners including in the United States, had “disrupted” two Russian money laundering networks, Smart and TGR. Called Operation Destabilise, the NCA and its partners, uncovered a complex scheme, whereby funds were collected in one country and to make the equivalent value available in another, often by swapping cryptocurrency for cash.

“This provides a mutually beneficial service, streamlining the movement of cash generated by crime groups in the West, while simultaneously laundering crypto for cyber criminals, and helping Russian oligarchs and elites to bypass sanctions,” the NCA said.

“They also helped Russian clients illegally bypass financial restrictions to invest money in the UK, threatening the integrity of our economy. From late 2022 to summer 2023 the Smart network was used to fund Russian espionage operations.”

84 arrests

NCA-coordinated activity has so far led to 84 arrests, including the Kuksov brothers, as well as the seizure of over £20 million in cash and cryptocurrency. Semen Kuksov and Dzetktsa coordinated with Nikita Krasnov, who is part of the Smart group, which in turned is headed up by Ekaterina Zhdanova.

Zhdanova worked with TGR in 2022 to move over £2 million illicitly into the UK for a Russian client which was used to purchase properties, the NCA said. In March 2022, Zhdanova assisted a Russian client in obfuscating their source of wealth in order to transfer over $2.3 million into Western Europe through a fraudulently opened investment account and real estate purchases, according to the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). Krasnov and Zhdanova were both designated by US authorities. Zhdanova is in pre-trial detention in France.

Kuksov and Dzektsa’s money laundering operation started shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in July 2022 and ran for a little over a year ending in September 2023.

“This was the answer to sanctions on Russian banks. But you could not stop money flows, there are still some ways to transfer money. That’s why if you’re cutting off something , you should close the loopholes. If you’re not closing loopholes, they will be like an efficient system of, let’s say, it’s like water. It can find the hole and a way to reach the final destination,” said Ilia Shumanov, a member of Transparency International Russia In Exile’s board and a managing partner at TriTrace investigative bureau.

Phones provide key evidence

Almost a year after his brother’s arrest Semen Kuksov and Dzetktsa were arrested on September 27, 2023.

When officers attempted to arrest Kuksov at his Kensington flat he locked the door and fled the scene, dropping one phone. He was eventually arrested in a taxi on Bayswater Road near his flat in Stafford Court. Officers recovered another phone from the back of the taxi and two SIM cards of which he was trying to dispose.

Kuksov and Dzetktsa’s phones provided police with critical information about their global cash to crypto money laundering operation and its scale.

“[The chats on the seized phones] plainly reveal the international nature of this operation. There were discussions about providing your services are far abroad as places as Australia, India, and Dubai. This was plainly a world-wide criminal operation. There were discussions about the use of the token system for the handover of large sums of cash, discussions about sums of criminal money in the hundreds of million. In the period between September and October 2022 there were mentions of cash deliveries, the use of tokens and some 116 transactions involving £5.5 million,” said Judge Connell in his sentencing remarks.

The token system is described by the NCA as street-level cash handovers using physical tokens, which is a common practice for cash laundering. In this case Kuksov and Dzetktsa arranged handovers which were followed almost immediately by a movement of cryptocurrency of the same value. It is like hawala, informal value transfer using cash, but with crypto. Kuksov  “admitted to operating an underground cryptocurrency exchange” according to the NCA.

Seed phrases

In addition, NCA officers seized several ‘seed phrases’ from Kuksov’s property, which he used to access cryptocurrency accounts. A seed phrase, also known as a mnemonic phrase or recovery phrase, is a sequence of random words that acts as a master key for accessing and recovering your cryptocurrency wallet.

NCA officers’ analysis of the accounts associated with the phrases showed that between January 2023 and Kuksov’s arrest in September 2023 – a nine-month period– credit transactions totalled approximately £30,503,000, debits totalled a similar amount, court records said. The NCA and the CPS did not respond to a query about why Kuksov and Dzektsa were not charged with laundering these assets.

Smart and TGR’s crypto addresses showed regular exposure to Garantex, the crypto exchange service that was sanctioned by the UK and US in 2022, the NCA said. Shumanov believes Kuksov may have been connected to crypto businesses in Russia and there was interest from Zhdanova, Krasnov and others, who were looking for a well-connected contact in United Kingdom. That is possibly how Kuksov became part of the network. It is also important that Kuksov, Krasnov and Zhdanova are all Generation Z or Millennials.

“Crypto is a Generation Z thing, it’s not like the methods that could be used by Vladimir Putin and his generation. It’s not the typical tool for money laundering or for transferring money. There should be some Generation Z guys. FinTech, it’s about the youth, not about the experienced financial advisors who prefer the old school schemes like cash, other money transfers or offshore transactions,” Shumanov said.

Chats and code names

Chats are on Telegram and WhatsApp between September 13 and September 27,^, 2023, discuss clearing £50,000 and £500,000 with a contact in Australia. There is a further conversation between July 25 and September 20, 2025 discussing cash deliveries to France, as well as requests for tokens and movements of cryptocurrency.

Kuksov and Dzetktsa use different code names for contacts. There is a conversation with someone called “Messi” about the cost of moving £150,000 to Dubai. Another thread of conversations between Kuksov and user called “Tennis” refers to cash seizures.

TI Russia in Exile and Compliance Corylated could not determine the identity of the “Messi” and “Tennis” contacts.

The Kuksov family did not respond to a request for comment sent to their barrister.

Further reporting

This is the second of three articles looking at the Semen Kuksov case written by Rachel Wolcott in collaboration with Ilia Shumanov and support from the Transparency International Russia in Exile dirty money investigation team.

First article: Golden Youth, the new face of Russian money laundering and sanctions evasion