A7A5: How Shor's New Cryptocurrency Threatens Moldova
... and undermines broader Western sanctions against Russia
In October 2024 investigative journalists at RISE Moldova reported that Ilan Shor had begun registering a new network of companies in Russia. The main company in this cluster is called A7, and there are more companies with varying names such as A7-Agent, A71 and more. While it wasn’t initially known what the purpose of these companies was, it was notable who Shor’s business partner was - Russian state owned Promsvyazbank (PSB). Shor owns 51% of A7, while the sanctioned bank owns the other 49%. PSB is sanctioned by the US, EU, Canada, UK, and other nations as a “core bank for Russia’s defense sector.” It is nominally cut off from global financial flows via the SWIFT network. PSB was also one of the primary partners in Shor’s voter bribery schemes during last year’s elections.
In May, RISE reported on additional companies and digital infrastructure that Shor was setting up as part of the A7 network. They concluded that the primary purpose of these companies was to facilitate currency trades and money transfers from Russia to other countries globally - including Moldova.
This week, a report from the Center for Information Resilience (CIR) outlined at least one key product being produced by A7 and why it is concerning for Russia’s ability to evade sanctions, and for Moldova in particular. Through these companies Ilan Shor launched a cryptocurrency called A7A5 in February. Today we’re going to take a deep dive into how this cryptocurrency is designed to evade Western sanctions, and what it all means for Moldova in particular.
A7A5 - The First Ruble Stablecoin
In the world of crypto, a “stablecoin” is a digital asset that claims 1:1 pegging with a real world currency. Unlike Bitcoin, or other crypto assets whose values fluctuate wildly with market speculation, stablecoins are meant to track the underlying currency. In the case of A7A5 this means that for every 100 rubles of the coin that you purchase, 100 rubles goes into PSB bank to back it.
Globally, the most well known stablecoin is USDT - or US Dollar Tether. Up until now there has never been a stablecoin backed by Russian rubles.
According to the CIR report, there are around 12 million A7A5 tokens out there with a paper value equivalent to around $149 million USD. That number can be a bit deceiving though, as it accounts for tokens that are still held by the owners and have not yet been sold. According to an expert in trans national money laundering that spoke to Moldova Matters on background, the actual liquidity of A7A5 is rather small at the moment - around $1.5 million USD equivalent. We’ll dive into why this is significant in more detail below.
Even without a huge pool of A7A5 out there, trading has been *very* active in the 4 months since its launch. On Wednesday the Financial Times reported that the token has seen over $9 billion dollars in transactions since February.
How is A7A5 Traded?
The CIR report explains that the stablecoin is technically registered in Bishkek Kyrgyzstan, and operates in that country’s jurisdiction. Kyrgyzstan has become a world leader in recent years at helping Russians evade sanctions and that appears to be the main reason both for A7A5 and for headquartering it there.
Initially, A7A5 could be purchased on the Garantex crypto exchange. This exchange has been linked for years to criminal efforts to launder the proceeds of ransomware payments and other illicit financial transactions. The key mechanism for this was the ability to trade various cryptocurrencies for the stablecoin USDT, and then convert this money easily into normal fiat currencies. Garantex has been under US Treasury sanctions since 2022, but continued operating until March 2025 when a coordinated US and EU law enforcement operation forced it offline. Law enforcement seized domains associated with the exchange, but Tether, the company behind USDT, also froze $23 million in USDT coins held in wallets associated with Garantex.
Following these actions, Garantex began shifting large amounts of A7A5 currency between wallets to effectively launder the coins and destroy their digital trail. Swiss company Global Ledger tracked these actions and found that these assets reappeared in a new crypro exchanged based in Kyrgyzstan called Grinex.
So it’s important to note, A7A5 isn’t currently widely available and is only hosted on a single, basically sketchy, crypto exchange - for now.
The A7A5 Innovation: 20%+ APR
What makes A7A5 a standout in the stablecoin world is the fact that it promises holders of the coin regular interest payments. Because the coin is backed by rubles placed in the PSB bank, this currency can be lent out at interest. Currently, Russia’s National Bank has set their key interest rate at 20%, though the commercial lending rate is higher. A7A5 promises a 50% share in the interest generated on deposits with holders of the coin. It is unclear who gets the other 50% of the profits from this scheme, but it is likely split by Ilan Shor, PSB and other interested parties.
Even with great interest rates, that doesn’t mean that global investors are lining up to buy A7A5. Given sanctions against PSB it is probable that even holding the coin is a sanctions violation in many countries. In addition, the ruble is far from a stable currency given Russia’s economic difficulties. That said, clever financial engineering may be able to offset these difficulties and make A7A5 an attractive place for investors who don’t care much about the sanctions to place their money - we’ll return to this topic below.
A7A5’s Infrastructure - It All Points Back to Shor
CIR’s report looked at the underlying digital infrastructure of the A7A5 cryptocurrency and related websites and discovered lots of links to Ilan Shor. It’s worth noting here that A7A5 has sought to distance themselves from A7 and Shor, putting out a statement that while the digital currency “cooperated with A7’s technical team in the initial phase,” they later “decided to completely separate due to different visions on the development strategy.” There are a number of technical reasons why this “separation” seems unlikely, but also one very practical one - Ilan Shor attended the Saint Petersburg Economic Forum last week as a representative of A7, and he spent his time there hawking A7A5.
CIR dug into the IP addresses hosting A7A5 infrastructure and discovered that of the 11 domains hosted on the same French IP address, 2 belong to A7A5 infrastructure and the remaining 9 include many that have been linked to Shor’s political activities in Moldova. These include ilan-shor[.]com, legalinfomoldova[.]com (linked to a 2023 campaign of Shor’s) and cell4call[.]com. That last site was shown have received connections from the secure “Bria” messaging app that Shor used to communicate with his confederates in Moldova. Moldova Matters covered the role Bria played back in the “Arina 007” sting operations targeting Shor’s attempts to buy local MPs.
Numerous other domains on this IP address link to websites for Shor’s Eurasia NGO as well as shell companies set up in various jurisdictions that are also linked to Shor. One such website for a Dubai based company sloppily failed to obscure their Whois data and CIR noted that the address of the website corresponds with Shor’s last known residence in Israel.
Other than pretty clearly linking A7A5 and all these companies to Shor, this technical analysis provides another interesting window into Shor’s operation. It is notable that all of this bespoke infrastructure is a pretty rare way to set anything up these days. Western companies would use AWS and Cloudflare - cloud hosting options to offload the work and cost of setting up your own systems. In Russia, there are local analogs such as DDoS-Guard, Rostelecom Solar and other companies that provide analogous services. Shor has clear reasons for locating his infrastructure outside of Western infrastructure, but why not use Russian options?
Next we’ll look at how Russia’s broader sanctions evasion and foreign currency operation works, and why Shor’s team is operating outside of it.
Ruble Transactions Under Sanctions
While lots has been written about the ways that the Russian government, Russian companies and Russian citizens find their way around financial sanctions, there’s one thing we need to focus on here: Russia is a kleptocracy, which means that lots of state officials, big and small, have a financial interest in various, nominally private sector, concerns - especially where the border is concerned.
This means that a company that wants to exports something, even things unrelated to waging war, like agricultural products, will have curators who make this possible. In Russia this is often called a крыша (krisha) or “roof.” Within the kleptocratic hierarchy the krisha is both a protector and extractor of rent. So let’s say we are trying to export lumber from Russia to somewhere else. Given currency restrictions this isn’t as simple as receiving a USD payment to your bank account. Lots of workarounds exist - gold for example - but what is key is the fact that these networks of unofficial exchange will be operated by the krisha, not the company itself. Whether it’s a customs official, or local FSB colonel, these officials have lucrative little empires of protection and facilitation. It isn’t really even appropriate to call this “corruption” per se, because in a kleptocracy it is a feature not a bug. It’s what happens when corruption captures the state itself1.
This is relevant for our purposes because this whole network is big business and big money. Competition against the entrenched powers here is not welcome and may be outright dangerous. Ilan Shor’s A7A5 is operating in a crowded space, but it’s also state sanctioned. So what’s going on?
Unpacking a Kleptocracy Startup
The CIR report notes that Osman Kabaloev, Deputy Director of the Financial Policy Department for Russia’s Ministry of Finance, spoke about A7A5 at an April 16 conference of Russian bankers. At the event, Kabaloev cited Tether’s blocking of USDT wallets at Garantex and spoke about the importance of developing a ruble based stablecoin. He cited A7A5 as an interesting project launched by “Kyrgyz colleagues” and noted that “there's even the possibility of some kind of return on investment,” referring to A7A5’s promise to pay interest.
CIR notes that A7A5 is publicly a product that is owned and managed by PSB, a Russian state owned bank, effectively owned by the Kremlin itself. Kabaloev’s distancing the Russian state from the project and referring to it as a Kyrgyz project underlines the probationary status of the project, according to an expert in trans national money laundering who spoke to Moldova Matters on background for this article. A7A5 is effectively a kleptocratic startup. The Russian state, via PSB, has given the project seed capital and is monitoring how it progresses.
Importantly, A7A5 is not being allowed to grow rapidly. As mentioned above, the process of “facilitating” currency transactions in the import / export space is part of a competitive kleptocracy. Entrenched interests are keen to prevent a turf war within the ranks and therefore are not allowing this startup run by fugitive Moldovans to tread on too many feet.
But there is another important aspect to this startup. A7A5 can facilitate payments and sanctions evasion a bit better than bags of cash or gold - but it has another trick up its sleeve due to its interest bearing nature, and that’s where A7A5 could become a major danger to the sanctions regime itself.
Going Unicorn
Traditionally a startup “going unicorn” means that it achieves a billion dollar valuation - something that has little meaning in Russia without either a transparent market or traditional rule of law. The expert I talked to for this article noted a different metric for when A7A5 could break out and become a major player - the development of a futures market.
Right now, crypto investors who are unworried about sanctions may find A7A5’s promise of major annual interest returns quite appealing - but there’s a catch. The ruble itself is very volatile. If the stablecoin promises 10%+ APR returns, but the value of the ruble against the dollar could drop by more than 10% in a year, it is high risk. That changes if the liquidity pool of A7A5 were to increase substantially and future institutional backing from PSB or other investors comes behind the project. If various conditions are met, then A7A5 could develop an attractive futures market, allowing investors to hedge against drops in the ruble valuation and securely invest in A7A5’s promised returns.
This could pose a major threat to Western sanctions against Russian banks. Effectively investors would be exchanging USDT or other crypto assets for A7A5, which is backed by deposits at Promsvyazbank - effectively injecting hard currency into the Russian banking system outside formal FX channels. As the expert explained:
“right now A7A5 is still alive, if there is an effort from the West it can be killed by sanctions. If they survive and move towards a futures market then the gates of hell are open.”
What All this Means for Moldova’s Elections
CIR’s report looking at A7A5 primarily focuses on sanctions evasion. Shor’s new network of companies and this crypto project seem mostly to be focused on facilitating money movements in and out of Russia.
That said, Ilan Shor’s usefulness to the Kremlin has always been his role in their hybrid war against Moldova’s democratically elected government. Given this fact, and the past incorporation of organized criminals into Russia’s foreign policy projects, we can surmise that A7A5 has 3 basic purposes:
To facilitate sanctions evasion, cross border financial transactions and to acquire USD outside of the traditional banking system.
To make a profit for Mr. Shor and PSB
To create a slush-fund to support Shor’s political manipulations in Moldova
From the Kremlin’s point of view this is win-win-win. If their startup works they have an effective sanctions evasion mechanism, but even if it stays small it keeps generating a dedicated fund for election manipulation in Moldova. Shor gets his cut and the kleptocracy takes care of its own.
The CIR report supports this thesis by noting that many of Shor’s recent shell company creations don’t appear to be involved in A7A5 directly. There are companies based in the Seychelles, or Dubai, with vague and catch-word heavy missions like “facilitating cross border payments” or logistics. In theory, this network of legal entities, or others that have not yet been discovered, could provide numerous ways for Shor to move money and crypto in order to flood it into his Moldovan election interference schemes.
There are numerous documented cases of Shor’s network using crypto to bring money into Moldova in last year’s elections. References to crypto in voter bribery appear in ongoing court cases relating to those efforts. At the same time, Moldova is somewhat unprepared to stop crypto from flowing into the country and being exchanged.
In the most recent Council of Europe “MONEYVAL” report from May 2025, the authors note problems of transparency around Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs) writing:
"Lack of regulation of the sector - the Republic of Moldova took the high-level policy decision to limit the provision of VASP services. The authorities explained that this was mainly taken as a result of the potential misuse of VA [virtual assets] transactions to circumvent financial sanctions. (...) the country is concerned by the fact that it is not able to fully identify all VASP acting illegally"
Essentially, trading in cryptocurrencies is illegal in Moldova and therefore the government has few insights into the black market that exists to fill this space. Within the National Police, the Centre for Combating Cybercrime is responsible for identifying unauthorized VASP activity. They often work on tips from the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) which has noted a major spike in suspicious transaction reports from 2022 - 2024, mostly from banks and payment service providers. But the report concludes the following:
"the Republic of Moldova has lack of institutional capacity to identify all natural and legal persons engaged in VA services illegally"
This means that crypto is still one tool in Shor’s tool belt for bringing illicit campaign funds into the country. Even without it though, profits from A7A5 could be transferred to crypto wallets anywhere, and curriers could bring cash into Moldova from Romania, Turkey or any other convienent transfer point. Police and Customs Officers have gotten better at intercepting these flows - but it’s a game of whack-a-mole.
The Threat of A7A5, and How it Can Be Stopped
At its core, A7A5 represents 2 major threats. Firstly, as a tool to evade sanctions and to attract dollars into the Russian banking system. Secondly, as a mechanism to make Russia’s interference in Moldovan politics pay for itself. On both fronts A7A5 is a budding threat, but risks becoming a major danger if it achieve’s kleptocratic unicorn status.
Moldova’s parliamentary elections are in September, and Russia is expected to substantially increase their hybrid war against the country in the next months. New funds and financial instruments in Shor’s hands could dramatically increase the risk of illicit financing and voter bribery playing a major role in the elections that will likely determine Moldova’s future in Europe.
At the same time, the financial engineering behind A7A5 makes it a major risk to the broader sanctions regime against Russia. If the project can create a futures market for a digital ruble, then opportunistic (if unscrupulous) investors around the world will begin injecting USDT and other dollar equivalent coins into the Russian banking system. If this happens, then A7A5 will become a financial pipeline that facilitates sanctions evasion while attracting investment capital and bypassing Western enforcement mechanisms in the process.
Right now, before A7A5 becomes a “unicorn,” it remains relatively easy to kill off with sanctions. Currently, there is no rule or regulation preventing Tether from allowing USDT to be traded for A7A5. The lack of a sanctions designation by the US or EU against A7A5 has given the project room to grow. If Tether is compelled to crack down on conversion to A7A5 and Western governments target sanctions at this ruble stablecoin startup then its impact could be minimized. But if A7A5 is allowed to grow, real money will be attracted into the system day by day and this startup in sanctions evasion may reach critical mass.
A7A5 is a project owned by a sanctioned individual, Ilan Shor, and a sanction bank, PSB. It began its life on a sanctioned crypto exchange and the primary purpose of the project appears to be evading sanctions. It seems pretty likely that the stablecoin will be sanctioned eventually, the only real question is how much runway it gets until that time.
That timeline really matters however. Ilan Shor has had a long career of financial scheming and money laundering. Each project has built on his past work, or the work of similar “entrepreneurs” of this space - from the Russian laundromat, to the Theft of the Billion. Whatever happens to A7A5, this is a learning experience for those behind it. The longer that A7A5 exists in a legal gray zone, the more capital it will attract and the better Shor will be able to hone this kind of financial scheme.
Ilan Shor has launched the first ruble backed stablecoin and it directly threatens Moldova’s democracy and Western sanctions more broadly. So what is the West going to do about it?
We’ll follow this story as it develops in the coming weeks and report back.
Moldova was previously rife with schemes like this - big and small. One example was the labor inspectorate that assured that companies operated legally and that employee safety was respected - kinda a combination of America’s OSHA and a tax inspector. Parliament passed as law mandating that every few years employees in various industries had to undergo safety trainings conducted by certified companies. Naturally, the labor inspectors set these companies up and assured that only the companies they owned, or that their family owned, got certified. They then conducted their “inspections” to assure that you were paying the required fees to their companies. Actual trainings often never even happened - just a contract with the company that provided that document saying that you did them. Sure it’s corrupt, but it’s state and institution capture corruption rather than cash under the table.