In late 2024, fugitive Moldovan oligarch Ilan Shor and Russian state-owned defense bank Promsvyazokbank founded A7. To help Russia circumvent sanctions, A7 launched the A7A5 crypto token in Kyrgyzstan in February 2025, the first stablecoin pegged to the Russian ruble. It is now printing its own banknotes so Russia can trade abroad.
This is reported by the Financial Times.
A7 Deputy CEO Iryna Hakobyan said that in the first half of the companyʼs operation, it processed transactions worth almost $98 billion. By December 2025, according to Hakobyan, A7 accounted for approximately 19% of foreign trade transactions of Russian enterprises.
Despite sanctions from the US, UK and EU, A7 opened offices in at least two African countries last year and has promised to expand to every major Russian city. Putin joined one of the recent ribbon-cutting ceremonies for A7’s office in Vladivostok via video link.
The A7 counterfeit banknotes, featuring stylized silhouettes of Russian cities, can be worth up to about $5 000. They are advertised on Telegram as a service for Russian tourists. Holders can exchange them for rubles at A7 offices in Russia or for foreign currency abroad.
According to the ad, while abroad, the banknote owner scratches off the silver film to reveal a QR code, sends it to the Telegram bot, and the agent must personally arrive with the cash. But right now, the bot only offers cash withdrawals in dirhams in Dubai and dollars in Istanbul.
The notes can also be exchanged for A7A5 cryptocoins, the cryptocurrency of A7. Blockchain analytics firm Elliptic estimates that 2 300 bonds have been redeemed for A7A5, with a total value of $8.6 million. The stablecoin itself has grown to play an important role in cross-border payments, with a total transaction volume exceeding $100 billion.
A7 and its affiliates have also launched other digital and gold-backed promissory notes, and they appear to be playing a central role in Russia’s growing cross-border payments architecture.
At a recent webinar for Russian SMEs, company representatives explained that Russian importers can buy promissory notes from A7 and transfer them, for example, to their suppliers in China as a “debt obligation”. This, they said, would be guaranteed by Russian law.
In an interview with the Russian newspaper Vedomosti in September, Hakobyan said that A7 takes responsibility for conducting transactions. This happens outside the banking system — without using the international interbank payment system SWIFT.
The company doesn’t disclose how it does this. However, in August, after a cyberattack, a batch of internal A7 documents were published online. According to reports from Elliptic and blockchain analytics group TRM Labs, the documents describe a system that uses cash, promissory notes, and cryptocurrency through a complex chain of companies, including several registered in Kyrgyzstan.
Based on these documents, TRM Labs identified $56 billion in cryptocurrency transactions through wallets linked to A7, with additional flows through intermediary wallets likely linked to A7 shell companies or foreign trading partners in China, Southeast Asia, and South Africa.
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