Russian-Estonian firm in Bosnia linked to suspicious financial and crypto deals

An Estonian company that owns several websites for buying and selling cryptocurrencies, and which has been warned about by financial agencies in several countries, has opened a business unit in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Detektor reveals

 A residential and commercial building in northern Tallinn, near the popular Stroomi beach, got new neighbors in November 2017. It was this building that served Russian Yuri Bolshukin as the address for founding a crypto exchange company called 1BIT.

Just a few months earlier, Estonian authorities had expelled two Russian consuls and sentenced a Russian citizen to five years in prison for collaborating with Russian intelligence.

However, this was not an aggravating circumstance for Bolshukin, who already owned dozens of companies in St. Petersburg.

With a degree from St. Petersburg University, Bolshukin describes himself as an experienced entrepreneur and leader who has worked in state structures.

The company he founded in Tallinn began its work in the lucrative world of cryptocurrencies.

The new business did not go according to plan, and the first problems for Bolshukin arose in 2021.

The Estonian Financial Supervision Authority Finantsinspektsioon warned at the time that 1BIT was participating in cross-border financial investments without the necessary permits.

That same year, authorities in Canada and the United Kingdom also warned about companies associated with the Russian.

Faced with official criticism, Bolshukin gradually let the business in Estonia die, and the company was officially closed in March 2024. Data shows that, during the period it was active, 1BIT never made a significant profit. Over the three years 1BIT officially earned only 101 euros, and that was only until December 2018, according to official reports from the Estonian Business Register. A year later, revenue, expenses and earnings were zero.

However, this Russian businessman at that time was thinking about doing business in a city about 2,000 kilometers away from Tallinn.

Detektor's investigation revealed that two years after founding a cryptocurrency trading firm in the Estonian capital, Bolšukin registered a branch of that firm in Banja Luka in Republika Srpska, which is still active despite the fact that the parent firm has been closed.

Yuri Bolshukin

Origin Saint Petersburg, Russia

1BIT Tallinn founded November 2017 · closed March 2024

1BIT Banja Luka registered 2019 · still active

Companies in Russia 10+ identified

"This company was created to work with cryptocurrencies, but the project failed," Bolšukin told Detektor in a Telegram message.

After a journalist asked him about the still active company in BiH, Balšukin stopped responding.

"Cryptoactivities are not illegal in themselves, but due to their cross-border nature, lack of regulation at the state level of BiH, speed of transactions and complex ownership structures, they represent a sector of increased risk," said Anesa Agović Đozo, an analyst at the Global Initiative against Organized Crime, citing the risk of money laundering and terrorist financing.

Warnings

The Estonian Financial Supervision Authority warned citizens in a 2021 statement that 1BIT was involved in financial investments without the necessary license.

The institution's written explanation to Detektor states that the purpose of the warning is to help protect consumers and investors by drawing attention to those who potentially provide financial services without authorization or to other circumstances that may pose a risk.

"The warning regarding 1BIT OÜ is based on information available to Finantsinspektsioon at the time of publication. The warnings are intended to inform the public and should not be interpreted as a determination of irregularities or a sanction," Finantsinspektsioon's response to Detektor states.

It also adds that the institution, as a general rule, does not provide further comments on the background of individual cases.

Additional details, however, can be seen in the Authority's 2021 statement. In addition to information about the company and Bolshukin's name, the document also contains a related web address: SPXMarkets.com.

Behind that address, as revealed by the British regulator, is a company of the same name, whose website is no longer available, but the archived version from 2021 shows that it advertised itself as "the world's leading trading network", with an invitation to clients to exchange and trade "with confidence".

Users could choose what kind of account they would open on the platform, and their prices ranged from 1,000 to 25,000 euros. The price also included a relationship manager, a weekly market review, and bonuses.

SPX Markets was warned about by the UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the country's main regulatory body for financial services and markets, and the Canadian regulator Ontario Securities Commission, which told Detektor that the regulatory body responsible for British Columbia had also warned about the same company.

The warnings state that the company is operating without the necessary licenses and that other investors have warned about them.

The regulators have also warned about other companies associated with Bolshukina, whose websites are no longer active at the time of publication of this story.

SMI Markets

The British regulator has warned about this company. At the bottom of the company's page, which offered cryptocurrency trading, Detektor saw, the Estonian company 1BIT, owned by Yuri Bolšukin, was listed as its headquarters.

Secure Currency Limited

The SPXMarkets.com website also lists this company as an affiliate, with headquarters in Tallinn, the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, and London. The company was listed as a fraudster by the Vanuatu regulator in 2021, and remains on the Vanuatu de-licensed list in 2026, despite having been shut down there in 2016.

Agović Đozo from the Global Initiative assessed that, if there are publicly available regulatory warnings from multiple countries, the competent institutions should conduct an enhanced risk assessment and, where legal requirements exist, additional checks.

"It is legitimate to ask what are the business, regulatory or other reasons why a company, whose business history has already attracted the attention of regulators in several countries, decides to register a branch office in Bosnia and Herzegovina."

Anesa Agović Đozo

1BIT in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Russia

Although the Estonian headquarters of 1BIT was shut down in 2024 due to failure to submit annual financial reports, the Bosnian branch was still active in August 2026.

Bolšukin registered the company in RS as an "agency for intermediaries, IT and financial services".

At the company's address, at Vase Pelagića Street 10 in Banja Luka, there is a business and residential building and a private house. Detektor journalists, in conversations with representatives of a dozen companies at that address, were told that no one had ever heard of 1BIT.

The journalists also visited the previous address where Bolšukin's company was located until July 2025 — at Dunavska bb, but no one remembered the Russian or his company there either.

As Detektor was told by the Securities Commission of Republika Srpska, 1BIT did not apply for a license to conduct cryptocurrency business.

Unlike the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, where cryptocurrency trading is not permitted, in the Republika Srpska this type of activity has been legally legal since July 2022. In that entity, the Securities Commission has established a register of virtual currency service providers.

As can be seen in the public register of companies of the Commercial Court in Banja Luka, the company authorized to represent 1BIT in the Republika Srpska is Rubber Zeppelin from Tallinn. Rubber Zeppelin confirmed to Detektor that the role of this company was short-lived.

"We helped establish 1BIT OÜ at the end of 2017, and after that, we provided it with services to secure the address of the headquarters and a contact person on an annual basis until 2020. The provision of these services was suspended in 2020. (...) According to publicly available data from the Estonian Register of Business Entities, 1BIT OÜ has not shown signs of active business since 2019, and was closed down in early 2024," Rubber Zeppelin told Detektor.

The response also states that it is not clear why it is mentioned in the BiH register: "(...) we do not know on what basis Rubber Zeppelin was identified as its representative and/or contact person. We have never been involved in the activities or management of that legal entity."

Economic analyst and consultant at Havrex Ltd. Zoran Pavlović explained to Detektor that "if the mother does not exist, the daughter cannot exist either."

"If it wants to be an independent company, and because the mother has shut down, then it must go through the regular registration procedure according to the principle of registration of any business entity or any company. If the branch works as a branch, and the mother is closed, then the branch must be closed."

Zoran Pavlović, economic analyst and consultant, Havrex Ltd. — adding that control of companies in this context is lacking in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Anesa Agović Đozo believes that in this case there are several circumstances that together can justify increased scrutiny, noting that the fact that a company has been the subject of regulatory warnings or is associated with other risky entities does not automatically mean that any criminal offense has been committed.

"This is not a matter of just one specific case. MONEYVAL and FATF have been indicating for years that Bosnia and Herzegovina must increase the number of financial investigations, improve the quality of suspicious transaction reports, improve supervision of notaries, lawyers, accountants and other non-financial professions, ensure reliable identification of beneficial owners and improve the operational exchange of information between institutions," said Agović Đozo, referring to the FATF decision of June 19, 2026 to include BiH on the so-called grey list of countries with deficiencies in the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing.

Owner of dozens of companies in Russia

The owner of the company 1BIT, Yuri Bolšukin, has several registered companies in Russia and is also a manager in a large number of companies.

The detector managed to identify ten of them, several of which were extinguished. Most have one or no employees, while at least one has a turnover that is measured in hundreds of thousands of euros.

Most of these companies have a similar description of activities such as IT and financial services.

Bolshukin, as Detektor discovered, was also one of the co-founders of the MyCryptoBank project.

As explained on one of the project's several websites, in 2018 MyCryptoBank was able to offer a service to a user who owned cryptocurrencies to "hold" a certain amount of cryptocurrency in their account on the MyCryptoBank platform instead of in their own digital wallet.

The platform promised to allow users to easily exchange their cryptocurrencies for euros or dollars.

Detektor journalists contacted several people named as part of the MyCryptoBank team. One of them, whose name is known to the editorial staff and who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity, said that she had only provided the project with free consulting, but that MyCryptoBank soon disappeared.

"They were getting free advice and suggestions from all the advisors, and then one day they disappeared, and that was the end of it. I never heard from them again. Very strange. The main person was Anton, I don't remember any Yuri," said the former advisor to the project.

He added that the MyCryptoBank case is very common in the crypto space: "One moment the project is here, the next — goodbye... It disappears. That's a very short story from 2019. I learned a valuable lesson to stay away from crypto projects — a complete waste of time, energy and effort."

Mohanraj Tamilaras, another person who responded to the reporter's request for an interview, said he was invited to join the team, but that never happened. However, his name appears on the project's archived website, which is no longer active at the time of writing. When Detektor noted that he was named as part of MyCryptoBank, Tamilaras added that he "had no transaction" with the project.

The archived version of the website also mentions other companies associated with Bolshukina, including 1BIT.

MyCryptoBank, according to one of its users, stopped responding to messages and questions about investments in 2019.

Detektor did not find any official government agencies warning about MyCryptoBank.

Commenting on the 1BIT case, Darko Obradović, director of the Center for Strategic Analysis in Belgrade, assessed that the fact that the countries in the Western Balkans do not harmonize or do not apply in practice all restrictive measures creates the possibility for Russia to develop its infrastructure that goes beyond the borders of the Balkans: "Especially interesting is the action that bypasses technological sanctions."

As he added, it becomes unclear why real security problems, which increasingly include Chinese citizens, and not only Russians, are being ignored due to geopolitical preferences.

"An equally important detail is that China and Russia do not cooperate in international legal and police assistance, which makes it difficult to compensate potential victims."

Darko Obradović