Russia’s finance minister, energy minister and first deputy prime minister have joined the board of A7, a payments firm the U.S. Treasury labeled a transnational criminal organization two weeks earlier.
Senior officials step in
Finance Minister Anton Siluanov, Energy Minister Sergei Tsivilev and First Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov are the newest directors. The move puts senior government figures directly inside a company that Washington says helps Russia move money around Western banking limits.
A7 was set up in 2024 by Promsvyazbank and Moldovan businessman Ilan Shor. PSB, a state lender that serves Russia’s defense sector, holds 49%. The U.S. Treasury has described Shor as a convicted fraudster.
What A7 does
Western sanctions have cut many of the banking links Russian companies once used to pay foreign suppliers. Trade with China, Russia’s biggest partner, has been hit hard. A7 says it replaces those links by routing payments through companies in other countries. The firm claims channels like its own now handle up to 80% of the payments behind Russia’s foreign trade. That figure is hard to check independently, but it shows how central A7 has become.
Treasury says that as of January 2026, A7 was processing more than 2,000 transactions a day. Those transactions were worth about 13% of Russia’s foreign-trade flows in 2025, roughly 81.44 billion euros or $91.5 billion.
On October 1, the Office of Foreign Assets Control designated A7 under Operation Economic Outcast, a campaign aimed at Iran. Treasury said Iran’s central bank and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had used A7’s channels. The designation listed addresses in Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria and Zimbabwe.
Token and proposed rule
A7A5, a ruble-backed stablecoin launched in Kyrgyzstan in 2025, sits at the center of the network. The token is backed by ruble deposits held at PSB. PSB estimates cumulative turnover at about $140 billion. A7 and the token have been under U.S. sanctions since August 2025.
FinCEN says more than 180 entities moved at least $179.1 billion through the token between February 2025 and June 2026. It has proposed a rule to block transfers involving A7’s front companies, called Sub-Agents. The measure would cover fiat and crypto and bind roughly 348,000 institutions, crypto exchanges included.
Blockchain firm TRM Labs has traced more than $166 billion in crypto activity linked to A7, according to Cryptopolitan. The company used a mix of regular bank transfers and cryptocurrencies USDT and A7A5.
UK adds sanctions
On October 8, the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office announced sanctions on 38 targets. They include three crypto exchanges, two payment platforms and one individual. The UK said two of those sanctioned handled transactions with the A7 network. For now, Russia seems to be putting senior officials behind the payment route rather than pulling it back.
