A UK citizen wanted by the US Department of Justice was detained by the Moscow office of Interpol (DoJ). The guy is suspected of participating in a plot to circumvent the restrictions imposed by the United States on North Korea.

Christopher Emms was arrested on February 21 in Moscow on the basis of a “red alert” issued by Interpol, local media reported. The British citizen, who was 31 years old, was arrested at the hostel where he was sleeping.

In April 2022, Emms, along with a Spanish national named Alejandro Cao De Benos, is believed to have provided North Korea with instructions on how it could use blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies to escape sanctions and launder dirty money. The 2019 Pyongyang Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Conference was planned and coordinated by the two people.

Virgil Griffith, a person who once worked on the Ethereum project, is the third person involved in the plot. In November 2019, he was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and, after pleading guilty, received a 63-month prison sentence. If he is convicted of one count of conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, Emms faces a possible maximum sentence of 20 years in jail.

Previously, Radha Stirling, the founder of Due Process International, which is a non-governmental organization that helps defend human rights against international enforcement agencies, said there was no hard evidence against Emms: “Precisely because he did nothing wrong; provided any information to North Korea that doesn’t already appear on the first page of Google.”

After an eight-month travel restriction, Emms was finally allowed to leave Saudi Arabia in September 2022, after Saudi Arabia rejected the American extradition request on the grounds that it had a legal basis. He wasted no time in leaving the country and went straight to Russia. However, despite the fact that the nation was the focus of the Justice Department’s attempts to implement financial sanctions on the cryptocurrency industry, local authorities made the decision to help their American counterparts.