Gergana Krasteva
Published November 21, 2025 7:03am
Updated November 21, 2025 7:03am
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Russian businessman Georgy Rossi (right, with Elena Chirkinyan) heads up the money laundering group TGR (Picture: NCA)
Buying cocaine on a Friday night in Britain could be inadvertently funding Russia’s war in Ukraine, the National Crime Agency (NCA) has revealed.
A Russian-led money laundering network worth £760 million, operating in 28 towns and cities across the UK, has been linked to street gangs in the UK.
Couriers collect the ‘dirty’ cash – some of which generated from ‘bumps’ on the weekend, others from firearms and immigration gangs – and then turn it into cryptocurrency.
The NCA warned that these transactions have a direct link to ‘geopolitical events causing suffering around the world’.
Sal Melki, deputy director for economic crime at the NCA, described it as a ‘vast criminal ecosystem that is funding some really bad things all around the world’.
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He added: ‘Today we can reveal the sheer scale at which these networks operate and draw a line between crimes in our communities, sophisticated organised criminals and state-sponsored activity.’
This network was first exposed because of Operation Destabilise, which in 2024 exposed a Russian-speaking money laundering network, at the heart of which are two linked criminal networks, Smart and TGR.
Sanctioned oligarchs, Russian elites, ransomware operators and organised criminal groups – including the notorious Kinahan cartel – benefit from the services, allowing them to move money around the world.
The NCA said the enterprise is so prolific that it bought a bank in Kyrgyzstan, which is used to make payments on behalf of the Russian war machine and help it sidestep sanctions.
The laundered funds are used for Russian espionage activities in Europe and to further the spread of Russian mis- and disinformation against the UK and its allies.
To date, 128 arrests have been made and more than £25 million in cash and digital assets seized under Operation Destabilise.
Smart is headed by 39-year-old Ekaterina Zhdanova, a Russian national said to have been born in Siberia before making it in the financial industry and building up connections in Moscow.
Georgy Rossi was the boss of TGR.
It is understood that both groups laundered for Irish cartel the Kinahans, and for state-controlled TV network Russia Today.
Senior members of the networks were sanctioned by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) in December and Zhdanova is being held in pre-trial detention in France.
In August, the UK government sanctioned a company called Altair Holding SA, which is linked to Rossi, as part of a crackdown on Russia’s attempts to exploit Kyrgyz financial systems and crypto networks.
The NCA said that, on Christmas Day 2024, Altair purchased a 75% stake of Keremet bank, which was subsequently sanctioned by the UK and US.
Keremet was identified as facilitating cross-border payments on behalf of Russian state-owned bank Promsvyazbank, which supported companies involved in the Russian military industry.
Mr Melki told a media briefing: ‘The people that have been responsible for purchasing that bank, and facilitating those payments that are supporting the Russian industrial military base, are operating in at least 28 cities and towns in the UK.’
He said the UK-based launderers connected to the same network are not just couriers.
Instead, they are individuals who are ‘sustaining an entire architecture that allows crime to pay in our country’.
He added: ‘For the first time, we are tying drugs trades in our community all the way through to the highest levels of organised crime, geopolitics, sanctions evasion, the Russian industrial military complex, and state-linked activity.
‘We could draw a really clear thread between somebody buying cocaine on a Friday night, all the way through to geopolitical events that are causing suffering across the world.’
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Mr Melki said the threat of these networks is ‘significant’ and the NCA and its partners ‘will not stop’.
He added: ‘There are other networks like them and it is imperative we continue to arrest, prosecute, seize and sanction, and deny these criminals access to the financial services they exploit.’
Meanwhile, security minister Dan Jarvis said: “This complex operation has exposed the corrupt tactics Russia used to avoid sanctions and fund its illegal war in Ukraine.
‘We are working tirelessly to detect, disrupt and prosecute anyone engaging in activity for a hostile foreign state. It will never be tolerated on our streets.’
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