A sanctioned cryptocurrency exchange has claimed that Western intelligence agencies are to blame for a targeted attack last week which led to the theft of one billion rubles ($13.2m) from Russian customers.

Kyrgyzstan-based Grinex is believed to be the successor to Garantex, which was sanctioned by the US in 2022 for enabling money laundering and illegal transactions. Grinex suffered the same fate last August, but continues to help Russian’s evade sanctions via crypto-transactions.

However, in a statement late last week, the firm said it had been forced to suspend operations following a “large-scale cyber-attack” by “foreign” intelligence agencies.

It claimed that only these actors would be able to muster the…