According to internal A7 documents, in the first six weeks of operation, from November to December 2024, about 126 billion rubles in cash passed through the system. In April 2025, the volume reached 195 billion rubles in one month, and in June — 250 billion rubles.
At its peak, A7 processed at least 58 tons of cash per month. Journalists write that money from the markets was first counted, packed into numbered bags, and sent to A7’s cash center in another district of Moscow, where about 50 cashiers checked the amounts and entered the data into the accounting system.
In A7’s payment register for late 2024, they found about 2,300 requests linked to six sections of “Sadovod”. Most payments were intended to go through the state-owned Trade Company of the Kyrgyz Republic, and the recipients were companies in China and Hong Kong that used accounts at ICBC, Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China, and China Construction Bank.
According to the investigation, at least 72 payment requests totaling about $11 million were sent only to ICBC. The journalists also managed to trace one of the transfers to the British bank Standard Chartered: in November 2024, a Hong Kong intermediary company transferred $287,000 to another Hong Kong company, Yiton Trading, and this transfer was linked to an A7 request where the client was listed as “Sadovod”.
Internal A7 documents show that after this, the company instructed intermediaries registered outside Russia to transfer money to foreign recipients, mainly Chinese suppliers, while the bank transfers did not reflect the original source of the cash rubles. The same materials say that PSB usually had to confirm the availability of funds for such payments, and the register listed “Sadovod” section numbers instead of end clients.
At the same time, journalists were unable to determine whether A7 and market intermediaries check the origin of the cash and the identities of its owners. A7, created in 2024 by structures linked to Moldovan politician Ilan Shor and Promsvyazbank for international payments to bypass sanctions, says it checks all clients; representatives of the companies did not respond to requests from ICIJ and “Sadovod”.
Financial crime expert Georgy Voloshin said that such a scheme helps not only bypass sanctions, but also create conditions for laundering money of potentially criminal origin. According to him, foreign banks see only transfers from foreign intermediary companies and cannot determine who originally handed over the cash in Russia.
