Binance Shared User Data With Russian Authorities, Leading to Ukrainian Donor’s Arrest

Binance handed Russian investigators the transaction records and identity documents they needed to build a terrorism-financing case. The target: a Russian IT specialist who donated to Ukrainian causes. Reuters broke the story. CoinDesk and Cointelegraph picked it up.

The user is Yuri Belenkiy. Transfers worth more than $700 triggered the probe. Binance supplied his date of birth, address, phone number, passport number. Copies of his Russian passport and Bulgarian residency permit too, according to law enforcement documents cited by Reuters. Russian authorities detained Belenkiy in September 2025. He is still in jail. Awaiting trial.

The donations in question were made between January 2023 and March 2024. They followed an appeal by exiled Kremlin critic Arkady Babchenko. Russia’s Investigative Committee alleged the money was headed for the Ukrainian military and a group tied to the Azov Brigade. Moscow classifies Azov as a terrorist organization. The practical upshot: a crypto transfer to a Ukraine-linked fundraiser became a terrorism charge inside Russia.

Case files document how the disclosure unfolded. Russian investigators sent a message to [email protected], an address Binance’s own website listed for Russian and Belarusian law enforcement inquiries. They got two responses. Both contained Belenkiy’s transaction history. The documents surfaced through The First Department, an organization that backs defendants in Russian political cases. A relative of Belenkiy passed them along.

Here is where it gets complicated.

Binance sold its Russian business to CommEX in September 2023. The exchange said operating in Russia no longer fit its compliance strategy. No revenue-sharing arrangement. No option to repurchase. A clean break, publicly. Whether those responses to Russian investigators went out before or after that exit? The reporting does not say. The emails suggest the break was not as clean as advertised.

Binance’s current law-enforcement guidelines are explicit. A valid court order, police order or warrant must precede any user-information handover in a criminal investigation. Did Russian investigators produce one for the Belenkiy request? Not confirmed in the reporting.

A Binance spokesperson declined to comment on specific confidential law enforcement requests or individual cases. The exchange issued a statement: “Binance does not make or enforce the laws of any jurisdiction, determine charges, or decide how any government uses information in legal proceedings. Like other global financial institutions, we cooperate with lawful information requests from law enforcement globally, subject to applicable legal, privacy and regulatory requirements.” Reuters noted that Binance would not say whether the disclosure may have breached European data protection rules.

That question matters. Belenkiy held a Bulgarian residency permit. Bulgaria is an EU member state. The bloc’s General Data Protection Regulation applies. Which jurisdiction’s legal framework governed the handover? The reporting does not establish that either.

Binance formally exited Russia. The emails tell a different story about what “exit” covers.