Binance’s Former Russia Head, Blum Co-Founder Arrested in Connection to Fraud Case

Vladimir Smerkis, Binance’s former Russia division head, was arrested in Russia for being connected to a large-scale criminal fraud case, local media outlet TASS reported on Sunday.

Zamoskvoretsky District Court, which resides in Moscow, granted an investigator’s request to detain Smerkis, an unnamed law enforcement agency source told TASS. The report did not share specific details of the fraud case. CoinDesk was unable to contact the Zamoskvoretsky District Court for more information.

Smerkis co-founded trading app Blum in December 2023 but the company said Saturday on X he had stepped down from his role as chief marketing officer and is no longer involved in the project. He has also been the managing partner of four other ventures including Tokenbox.io and The Token Fund according to LinkedIn.

Prior to starting Blum, Smerkis worked for the Binance crypto exchange from 2022 for just under two years. In that time he was the head of Russia and later the head of its Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) business, according to LinkedIn. The CIS is a group of 11 nations which coordinate on key decisions like trade and lawmaking; Russia is among those nations.

Binance did not return a request for comment.