Caught in the FTX storm: how a crypto high-flyer fell to Earth

theguardian.com:

As western brands began the stampede out of Russia a year ago, its citizens found themselves unable to pay for the international goods and services with which they had become so familiar.

Among the first firms to sever ties were the credit card companies Visa and Mastercard, leaving Russians struggling to spend their cash on services from Netflix to Amazon.

But as the country was isolated by the west, sources claim that some enterprising Russians discovered a clever loophole – by using some technological knowhow and a particular mobile phone app they could sidestep those restrictions, allowing them to stream movies and shop online.

The app in question can be traced back to the second floor of an office in London’s wealthy Knightsbridge district, where the Russian-born, British-educated tech entrepreneur Alex Grebnev runs his ventures, including Maps, a payments, mapping and cryptocurrency app.

Russian users of Mapshave cast a shadow over the business – sparking concerns from business partners that it may have breached EU sanctions imposed after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. They also resulted in an important partnership with Mastercard being terminated.

And the reason? The discovery late last year that at least 111 Russian users were signed up for its app-based payment card, allowing them to use Maps to spend their cash, despite western efforts to isolate the country.

Those revelations represent the latest setback for Grebnev, one of a breed of tech entrepreneurs whose fortune has followed the boom and bust of cryptocurrencies. The former Goldman Sachs banker, who went to school with Rishi Sunak, has been caught in the fallout from the collapse of FTX, the failed crypto exchange run by Sam Bankman-Fried.

Grebnev’s ventures,