A Financial Times investigation has found that Kremlin-backed FinTech A7 moved more than $6.9bn through the international banking system despite sanctions on Russia.
UK anti-money laundering technology company SmartSearch says the case should prompt regulated firms to rethink how they monitor risk after onboarding.
According to the FT, A7 used a web of front companies, existing businesses and counterfeit invoices to access the SWIFT system. The National Crime Agency (NCA) and the UK Government have since issued an industry-wide alert, warning that the network depends on third-country financial institutions and illicit use of the global financial system to get around sanctions.
The NCA says A7 claims to have settled more than $86bn of transactions in its first year of operation. The $6.9bn tracked by the FT reflects only the activity identified through the international banking system.
SmartSearch CEO Phil Cotter said, “This is not a failure of any single institution. It is a highly sophisticated, deliberately layered exploitation of legitimate financial infrastructure, using techniques that are consistent with well-documented trade-based money laundering typologies.”
The geopolitical stakes are considerable. The NCA has linked A7 to sanctioned Russian state-owned bank Promsvyazbank and state development corporation VEB.RF. It says the network’s clients include “some of Russia’s most important players in the military-industrial complex”. The agency has also raised the possibility that proliferation financing may be involved.
SmartSearch’s report, The State of Compliance in 2026, surveyed 1,000 senior decision-makers across UK regulated sectors. It found that 96% see geopolitical factors as a major influence on their compliance strategies over the next 12 to 18 months. Respondents named state-sponsored attacks as the biggest single geopolitical risk (16%), followed by changes to international sanctions and embargoes (11%).
Cotter said, “Firms have been telling us for months that they see this coming. The A7 case is a live example of what they have been worried about.”
SmartSearch argues that firms handling international payments, overseas customers or cross-border ownership structures cannot rely on checks carried out only at onboarding. Its research shows that 54% of identity checks are still done manually, and 52% of firms struggle to verify beneficial ownership across complex structures.
“A customer who was low-risk at onboarding six months ago may not be low-risk today. Geopolitical conditions change faster than annual review cycles,” Cotter said.
The UK Government says its response to A7 is part of wider international action, including UK, US and EU designations and Operation DESTABILISE. Cotter warned that the threat will continue to grow: “As sanctions regimes tighten, as geopolitical tensions rise, and as the tools available to bad actors become more sophisticated, the incentive to find and exploit gaps in the international financial system will only increase. Regulated firms should expect more cases like this to surface, not fewer.”
Compliance failures also carry commercial consequences. SmartSearch found that 87% of businesses would cut ties with a brand after a compliance breach.
“For every regulated firm that does not yet have continuous monitoring in place, the question is not whether the next incident will come, but whether the firm will be caught up in it when it does,” Cotter concluded.
Copyright © 2026 RegTech Analyst
Copyright © 2026 RegTech Analyst
