Binance's Former Russia Head, Blum Co-Founder Arrested in Connection to Fraud Case

Smerkis worked for Binance from 2022 for conscionable nether 2 years.

May 19, 2025, 3:53 p.m.

Vladimir Smerkis, Binance's erstwhile Russia part head, was arrested successful Russia for being connected to a large-scale transgression fraud case, section media outlet TASS reported connected Sunday.

Zamoskvoretsky District Court, which resides successful Moscow, granted an investigator's petition to detain Smerkis, an unnamed instrumentality enforcement bureau root told TASS. The study did not stock circumstantial details of the fraud case. CoinDesk was incapable to interaction the Zamoskvoretsky District Court for much information.

Smerkis co-founded trading app Blum successful December 2023 but the institution said Saturday connected X helium had stepped down from his relation arsenic main selling serviceman and is nary longer progressive successful the project. He has besides been the managing spouse of 4 different ventures including Tokenbox.io and The Token Fund according to LinkedIn.

Prior to starting Blum, Smerkis worked for the Binance crypto speech from 2022 for conscionable nether 2 years. In that clip helium was the caput of Russia and aboriginal the caput of its Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) business, according to LinkedIn. The CIS is simply a radical of 11 nations which coordinate connected cardinal decisions similar commercialized and lawmaking; Russia is among those nations.

Binance did not instrumentality a petition for comment.