- Browder aged 17 exposed A7A5 Russian stablecoin used to evade Western sanctions.
- A7A5 processed over $110 billion in illicit transactions funding Russia in 2025.
- The UK sanctioned A7A5 enablers after 26 MPs and Lords wrote to foreign secretary.
A 17-year-old British student found out he had been sanctioned by Russia while sitting at the back of his economics class. Alexander Browder opened his laptop and saw a Reuters headline with his own name in it.
Russia’s foreign ministry accused him of spreading misinformation. Browder says the real reason is simpler. He spent the past year and a half building the world’s largest open-source database of cryptocurrency money laundering and his work exposed a Russian state-sanctioned stablecoin called A7A5 that processed over $110 billion in illicit transactions in 2025 alone.
“I am going to wear it as a badge of honour. It shows me that I touched a nerve and I am looking in the right places,” Browder said.
What He Found
A7A5 is a ruble-pegged stablecoin built specifically to help Russia evade Western sanctions imposed following the invasion of Ukraine. The European Union sanctioned A7A5 in October 2025, describing it as a financial instrument designed to bypass war-related economic restrictions.
Browder’s database mapped how dirty money moves through crypto networks and identified the enablers operating behind the stablecoin. Last month 26 senior British MPs and Lords wrote to the foreign secretary demanding sanctions against those enablers. The UK government acted.
A week later Russia sanctioned Browder and four other British nationals including journalist Katherine Belton were sanctioned alongside him.
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His Response
Browder is the son of Bill Browder, the prominent anti-corruption campaigner who has spent decades exposing Russian financial crime. The family background means living under a degree of threat is not entirely new territory.
“If you live in fear you will always be constricted,” he said. “I want to push so far back that the Russians are on the back foot, not me.”
The Broader Context
Russia is simultaneously moving to tighten domestic crypto regulation. A bill advancing through parliament could ban unlicensed crypto platforms starting July 2027 and impose criminal penalties on unregistered digital asset services.
The dual approach of using crypto for sanctions evasion abroad while cracking down on unlicensed platforms domestically reflects a regime trying to control the technology rather than avoid it.
Browder says he has no intention of stopping.
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