Already a subscriber? Make sure to log into your account before viewing this content. You can access your account by hitting the “login” button on the top right corner. Still unable to see the content after signing in? Make sure your card on file is up-to-date.

A Russian military court has handed an IT specialist a 13-year sentence for financing terrorism over donations he made to Ukraine’s military, a conviction built on transaction records the cryptocurrency exchange Binance gave to Russian investigators.

Getting into it: The 2nd Western District Military Court convicted 49-year-old Yuri Belenkiy on Monday and ordered him to serve the first three years in prison and the remaining 10 in a strict-regime penal colony. The court also fined him 500,000 rubles, roughly $6,300.

Prosecutors said he sent money to Ukraine’s military and the Azov unit, which Moscow treats as a terrorist organization, 15 times between August 2022 and March 2024. He got the account details from a post by Arkady Babchenko, a Kremlin critic living in exile.

Records seen by Reuters put the total at a little over $700. Belenkiy, who has lived in Bulgaria on a residence permit since 2015, was picked up at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport during a visit in September 2025, first jailed for “petty hooliganism” and then charged with financing terrorism. He has denied the charges, and his legal team says it will appeal.

According to documents reviewed by Reuters, Binance supplied his complete transaction history after Russia’s Investigative Committee asked for it, despite having left the Russian market in 2023. A crypto regulation lawyer told Reuters in August that Binance had no obligation to share the data and could even have been prohibited from handing it over under European Union privacy law because Belenkiy lives in Bulgaria. His defense also questioned at trial whether Binance was really the source of the records. The Russian rights group Memorial considers him a political prisoner.

In a statement, Binance said it “does not make or enforce the laws of any jurisdiction, determine charges, or decide how any government uses information in legal proceedings.”