BitRiver Founder Runets Charged with $12.5 Million Fraud

Igor Runets, founder of Russia's largest crypto mining company BitRiver, has been charged with 'large-scale' fraud by Russian authorities. According to investigators, Runets caused damages exceeding 1 billion rubles ($12.5 million) when he failed to deliver equipment to Infrastructure of Siberia, a subsidiary of En+, a multibillion-dollar corporation.

The alleged incident occurred in 2023 when Runets entered into an $8 million contract that it never fulfilled. This is not the first time Runets has faced charges: he was previously detained and placed on house arrest in February for three counts of tax evasion. The Stanford University MBA graduate founded BitRiver in 2017 and expanded its operations to 15 data centers with over 175,000 servers.

The company's financial struggles began after several crypto mining centers were closed due to a six-year government ban across 10 regions. In February, a regional arbitration court opened insolvency proceedings against Group of Companies Fox, BitRiver's controlling shareholder, which owns 98% of the company's authorized capital.