The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) has identified a major crypto criminal among those who have been exposed to diverting funds to obscure tax havens through Pandora Papers.
According to an ICIJ document released on October 3 that summarizes the organization’s findings from its investigation into Pandora Papers, offshore assets belonging to the so-called “Bitcoin czar convicted of money laundering in connection with the largest electronic activist in history” have been identified to be transacted from by a company.
Pandora sheets consist of 2.94 terabytes of data covering 11.9 million records from 14 different external service providers. The documents claim to reveal the hidden assets of more than 330 high-ranking politicians and government officials from 90 different jurisdictions, including 35 state leaders and more than 130 billionaires.
ICIJ also notes that the assets of “bankers, major political donors, arms dealers, international criminals, pop stars, spy chiefs and sports giants” can be identified among the documents.
Although the “Bitcoin czar” identified in Pandora Paper is not directly named, their verdict regarding the most significant cyber theft in history narrows the scope of the possibility of an individual being identified.
Correspondents have described the Carbanak hacker group’s operations as unparalleled in scale and value, with it estimated that the cyber gang stole more than $1.24 billion from financial institutions and companies located in more than 100 countries between 2013 and 2017.
While two of the six individuals have been sentenced for their role in the Kurbanac, the circumstances surrounding the 2018 arrest of the presumed Karbanac leader Denis Tokarenko (also known as Dennis Katana) suggest he may be the culprit identified in the Bandura Papers.
According to a Bloomberg Businessweek article recounting the arrest of Tokarenko in March 2018, the Spanish National Police found 15,000 bitcoins worth $162 million at the time in the hacker’s possession.
Carlos Yuste, chief inspector of the Cybercrime Center of the Spanish National Police, told the publication that Tokarenko had also used a bitcoin mining operation purchased in China to launder his stolen funds into bitcoin.
Several analysts also described the 2016 Bangladesh electronic bank heist in which hackers stole nearly $1 billion from the New York Federal Reserve account owned by the Bangladesh Central Bank as the largest virtual theft in history.
Related: The European Union removes this crypto hotspot from the tax haven blacklist, clearing the way for further adoption
However, Maya Santos Deguito, a former employee of the Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation, is the only person convicted of cyber theft so far, and the Cointelegraph investigation has not provided any sources of linking Deguito to crypto assets.
