How UK Drug Dealing Fueled Russia’s War Machine

Sal Melki, UK National Crime Agency’s deputy director for economic crime, said this was the first time street crime had been linked to the Russian war effort.

An undated image of George Rossi and Elena Chirkinyan, whose TGR group has been identified by UK's National Crime Agency as a Russian-controlled money laundering network (Left), and (Right) some of the money that was recovered. UK National Crime Agency

This week, Britain’s National Crime Agency (NCA) lifted the lid on how two UK-based networks were allegedly laundering billions of dollars of money from street-level drug dealing and other crimes and indirectly helping to fund the Russian war effort in Ukraine.

The complex tale involves cryptocurrency, Bulgarian spies, “golden passports,” a pro-Moscow influencer and oligarch in Moldova, and a former professional soccer player in Scotland.

Linking Drugs With Geopolitics

“For the first time we are tying drugs trades in our community all the way through to the highest levels of organized crime, geopolitics, sanctions evasion, the Russian industrial-military complex, and state-linked activity,” said Sal Melki, NCA deputy director for economic crime.