TechFlow News, March 10: According to a report by Decrypt, Moldova’s National Anti-Corruption Center (CNA) has uncovered a scheme to influence the country’s 2025 parliamentary elections using cryptocurrency, involving $107 million.
Alexandr Pinzari, Director of the CNA, stated that the scheme employed “complex transaction operations” via non-custodial cryptocurrency wallets to transfer digital assets to intermediaries in Moldova, who then converted them into cash and distributed the funds to local activists for voter bribery, promoting specific candidates, and mobilizing rally participants. The funds originated from two centralized cryptocurrency platforms based in Russia and Kyrgyzstan.
Blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs linked this activity to “InfoLider,” a foreign influence operation backed by Russia, and confirmed that the Kyrgyzstani cryptocurrency exchange TokenSpot was one of the sources of the transactions. TRM Labs had previously identified TokenSpot as a likely front company for the sanctioned Russian exchange Garantex, with both entities closely tied to a “Kremlin-backed sanctions evasion ecosystem.”
