The Financial Times reported on 21 September that A7, a payments network built with Kremlin backing to replace Western channels for Russian importers, moved more than 6.9 billion dollars through the international banking system using forged invoices, front companies and pre-existing firms to reach SWIFT, the messaging system Russian banks were cut off from after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The findings rest on hundreds of thousands of internal A7 documents reviewed by the newspaper.
Where the money went
Between late 2024, when A7 was set up, and August 2025, accounts at Standard Chartered in Hong Kong received 1.1 billion dollars from A7-linked entities, DBS in Hong Kong received 273 million dollars and Citigroup clients received 74 million dollars, according to the FT. Clients of Deutsche Bank in Europe received about 18 million dollars over the same period. First Abu Dhabi Bank, the largest lender in the United Arab Emirates, opened accounts for 17 A7 entities whose outbound payments totalled more than 1.8 billion dollars, including about 1.3 billion dollars paid to external counterparties. A7 also opened accounts at JPMorgan Chase, the FT reported. One A7 entity opened an account at the Hong Kong branch of Singapore's DBS: it received 60 million dollars and made payments of 207 million dollars, though the FT said it could not determine how much of that passed directly through the bank. Chinese bank accounts were the final destination for just over half of the funds covered by the documents.
What A7 is, and how large it claims to be
A7 was founded in Russia and Kyrgyzstan by Ilan Shor, a Moldovan oligarch, with support from Promsvyazbank, a state-owned lender closely tied to the Russian defence industry, which describes A7 as the leading operator of cross-border payments for Russian imports. A7 says it handles nearly 20 percent of Russia's foreign trade payments, more than 100 billion dollars a year, according to the Wall Street Journal. An Open Source Centre report published in June with TRM Labs concluded that A7 had relied heavily on conventional banking rather than the crypto rails it advertised, probably moving tens of billions of dollars, with Kyrgyzstan acting as a major hub through the state-owned Trading Company of the Kyrgyz Republic.
How the scheme was built
Under the model described by the FT, front companies arranged for cash to be deposited at banks inside the SWIFT network so that invoices abroad could be settled on behalf of Russian companies. To get past anti-money-laundering checks, staff prepared counterfeit invoices, kept a library of thousands of corporate seals, some forged and others copied from genuine documents belonging to companies that were unaware of it, and were instructed to replace customs codes for restricted goods with codes for similar unrestricted goods. A February 2025 payment for 500 night-vision scopes worth 3.6 million renminbi, about 510,000 dollars, was documented as toughened glass, with staff also discussing whether to relabel the goods as footwear. A separate 1.8 million euro payment from Dubai Islamic Bank to Banque Misr, routed through an A7 front in the UAE, was documented as more than 1,000 power adapters when the invoice covered two CNC machines for metal machining. Some of the leaked payments related to war-related goods, including military equipment and purchases by Russian security services. The data also identified A7 accounts from which billions of dollars of Tether tokens were sold to Russian buyers.
Why it matters
The case turns on correspondent banking, the layer that lets a payment travel from a bank with no direct relationship to a sanctioned jurisdiction into the dollar and euro systems. The FT's account describes a network that exploited the assumption behind SWIFT monitoring, namely that the sending bank has properly verified its own customers. It also shows how dependent the operation was on the institutions it claimed to bypass. In February 2025 Standard Chartered raised suspicions and the accounts of A7-linked recipients at the bank were soon closed, after which A7 shifted more activity through the UAE, where further anti-money-laundering queries were met with false invoices. A7 was sanctioned by the United Kingdom in May 2025 and by the European Union in July 2025, so the flows described span the period before and around those designations. Zach Tvarozna of the Open Source Centre said the new data show the network is far larger than previously understood and should force a reassessment of how difficult it is to keep correspondent banking clean.
What the documents do not show
The figures come from leaked internal documents, not from a regulatory filing or a court record. The FT could not determine the total value of an additional 17,500 payments mentioned in the data, and could not establish how much of the money recorded at DBS passed through the bank. None of the reports reviewed identifies a charge, penalty or court proceeding against the named banks in connection with these flows, and the material does not establish that any bank knew the payments rested on forged paperwork. First Abu Dhabi Bank said it does not comment on specific cases, confirmed that all identified A7-linked accounts had already been detected and closed, and said it seeks to comply with U.S., U.K., EU and United Nations sanctions. DBS said it had no direct relationship with A7 and that it took appropriate measures on the account it identified. Standard Chartered, Citigroup, JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank stressed their commitment to anti-money-laundering requirements and declined to comment further. A7, Eldik, Aiyl and Eurasian Savings Bank did not respond to the FT's requests for comment.
Sources
- Financial Times, "Kremlin-backed forgery scheme moved $6.9bn through global banks", 21 September 2026: ft.com
- Il Sole 24 Ore, "Ft: 6.9 billion 'laundered' by Moscow via global banks", 22 September 2026: en.ilsole24ore.com
- Oninvest, "FT: Citi, Deutsche, and other banks processed $7 billion in Russian payments in defiance of sanctions", 22 September 2026: en.oninvest.com
- Open Source Centre and TRM Labs, "The Big Shor: A7 and the Illusion of Russian Financial Innovation", 12 June 2026: opensourcecentre.org
