TIME: Russia helped Venezuela create a cryptocurrency to circumvent sanctions

What's happened

The Venezuelan cryptocurrency Petro, which was launched in late February, was created jointly by Russian and Venezuelan officials and businessmen to circumvent US sanctions, say Time sources . They say that Vladimir Putin personally decided to help Venezuela.

How it all started

Time writes that Russia is trying to fight the dominance of the dollar in the world market and US sanctions, including with the help of cryptocurrencies. It was eventually decided to abandon the idea of ​​​​creating a cryptoruble , but, according to an employee of the “Russian state bank that works with cryptocurrencies,” Putin’s advisers convinced him to help Venezuela.

Friends from the Ministry of Finance

• On February 21, the very next day after the launch of Petro, Venezuelan Finance Minister Simon Zerpa met in Moscow with Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov to tell the Russian government about the results of the launch, Time writes. Photos from the meeting are posted on Zerpa's Twitter.

https://twitter.com/SimonZerpaD/status/966321550294179841

• The Russian Ministry of Finance, in a commentary to Time, rejected both the connection of any of the department’s employees with the creation of Petro, and the fact that the Venezuelan cryptocurrency was discussed at a meeting on February 21 or at any other time. At the same time, as the newspaper notes, the Russian Ministry of Finance did not officially report on this meeting.

Friends from Stroytransgaz and Uralsib

During the official announcement of the launch of Petro, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro thanked his “Russian advisers”, as Time calls them, Denis Druzhkov and Fyodor Bogorodsky, for their help in the fight against “American imperialism”.

Denis Druzhkov founded the Zeus cryptocurrency exchange last fall , its brokerage companies are registered in the United States.

• In the description of the Zeus project, Druzhkov is called a trader with 25 years of experience.
• Druzhkov's business partner is Sergey Litvin , a former vice president of Evraz, and now a member of the board of Stroytransgaz, Gennady Timchenko, who has been under US sanctions since 2014.
• TIME Lytvyn told TIME that the Zeus team did the "technical analysis" of the Petro, but was not involved in its creation. Zeus investor, former owner of the Morton development company Alexander Ruchev said at the end of February that the company helped develop a cryptocurrency platform.
• A source close to Ruchyev told The Bell that Zeus did carry out a whole range of technical work to release the cryptocurrency. The work was successful, and the Venezuelan side plans to involve Zeus for further cooperation. In the future, the Venezuelan authorities are going to provide Petro with gold and diamonds.

Fedor Bogorodsky on his website says that he used to work at Metallinvestbank and Uralsib, and since 2009 he has been living in Uruguay, where he does business and promotes Russian culture (in particular, Bogorodsky, a descendant of the writer Nikolai Karamzin, opened Montevideo in the capital of Uruguay House of Karamzin).

• Bogorodsky is the director of Aerotrading, which positions itself as a “blockchain technology consultant.” The company's website and twitter appeared the day after the official release of Petro. The site is a single page containing a link to twitter. In the social network - three posts from February 21. One of them is to welcome Petro into the blockchain ecosystem.
• According to Bogorodsky, Aerotrading was a "technical partner" of the Petro project, but did not participate in any negotiations between the Russian and Venezuelan finance ministries. Russia has been moving towards creating its own cryptocurrency for some time, but the bureaucracy is slowing down the process, and “Venezuela wanted to do everything quickly, and we were ready to help,” Bogorodsky told TIME.

US sanctions

On March 19, Donald Trump stepped up sanctions against Venezuela, extending them to the petro cryptocurrency as well. Now US citizens are prohibited from making transactions with the Venezuelan cryptocurrency.

Petro (officially) should help bring Venezuela out of the crisis that led to the depreciation of the bolivar. Cryptocurrency is tied to oil quotes. Maduro said that during the pre-sale, petro raised more than $5 billion. We wrote in detail about the launch of petro here .

Artem Gubenko

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