Washington and London crack down on Ilan Șor's "A7" network — when will Budapest act?

In early October, the U.S. Treasury Department launched an operation codenamed “Economic Outcast” against the network known as A7, described as one of the world's most complex parallel banking systems, which the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has declared a significant transnational criminal organization. At the head of the mechanism is Ilan Șor, a fugitive oligarch of Moldovan origin who has already been convicted in his home country of a massive bank fraud and who has previously appeared on several international sanctions lists. Alongside the American move, the United Kingdom also introduced 38 new sanctions, targeting the financial platforms, oil companies and vessels that keep Russia's war economy running, including actors that carried out transactions through Șor's network.

According to U.S. authorities, A7 was specifically built to allow sanctioned actors to move their money disguised as legitimate trade. The network operated through dozens of shell companies registered in third countries; these so-called sub-agents were directly controlled by Șor's people, who accessed the bank accounts through VPN connections set up specifically for this purpose in order to conceal their real whereabouts. The illicit transactions were concealed with falsified trade documents, fabricated export-import records and deceptive descriptions of goods. The system also included a ruble-backed crypto token called A7A5, issued by the network-affiliated company Old Vector LLC, which enabled the international movement of illicit capital and directly benefited sanctioned infrastructure providers. The scale is staggering: by its own account, at the start of 2026 the network was processing more than two thousand transactions a day, worth a total of more than 7,500 billion rubles — roughly 91.5 billion dollars — equivalent to about 13 percent of Russia's foreign trade in 2025.

According to an investigation by the U.S. financial crimes enforcement agency FinCEN, Șor's machine grew far beyond Russian interests and became a vital hub for Tehran and its allies as well. A7 offered secure payment channels to the Iranian central bank, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and terrorist organizations such as Hamas. One sub-agent received about 140 million dollars directly from companies involved in the illegal shipment of Iranian crude oil, while another 1.6 million dollars went toward Iranian arms purchases. The network was linked to Iran's largest cryptocurrency exchange, Nobitex, and also handled payments for ransomware groups and North Korean hackers attacking global digital platforms. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Washington is dismantling the financial infrastructure that allows Iran and other adversaries to evade sanctions, and that anyone who helps finance America's adversaries in violation of sanctions will lose access to the U.S. financial system. The U.S.-jurisdiction assets of A7, its sub-agents, and the companies they majority-own have been frozen, and FinCEN's whistleblower program is offering rewards to those whose information leads to fines exceeding one million dollars.

The British package points in the same direction, but on a broader front. London blacklisted the companies Zarubezhneft and INK Capital, meaning that, together with earlier measures, more than 90 percent of Russian oil production capacity is now under British sanctions. It also added more aging vessels, often sailing under false flags, bringing the number of sanctioned Russian ships to over six hundred. It blocked two payment platforms and three cryptocurrency exchanges with ties to Kyrgyzstan for processing A7 transactions. Seventeen companies and individuals were also excluded from international markets for supplying electronic components and machine tools needed for Russian drone and ballistic missile production.

Șor's career is a clear illustration of how a local fraudster can become a strategic tool of the Kremlin. His name first became known in connection with the 2014 Moldovan bank fraud, the so-called “stolen billion,” for which he was sentenced in absentia to fifteen years in prison. He later gained notoriety as a pro-Russian politician and organizer of networks built to influence Moldovan elections, and today he runs an underground banking system that serves as critical infrastructure for both the Moscow and Tehran regimes. His name also sounds familiar in Romania, since according to the investigative outlet ReporterIS, the pro-Russian Călin Georgescu's “Food, Water, Energy” program is almost a word-for-word copy of one of Șor's earlier projects.

Whether the shutdown of A7 will truly deal a painful blow to Moscow and Tehran depends largely on how closely Washington and London's example is followed by the countries where the network's sub-agents operated — including Hungary, where a network linked to Șor has already surfaced in Budapest in at least one case.

Ugar