A Moscow court has moved Igor Runets, founder and former chief executive of BitRiver, from house arrest into pretrial detention after investigators charged him with large-scale fraud over cryptocurrency-mining equipment allegedly never supplied to structures of Oleg Deripaska’s En+ group. The move marks a sharp escalation for the man who built Russia’s biggest mining operation.
The charge and the change in custody were first reported on July 29 by RBC, citing sources. Investigators estimate the damage at nearly ₽1 billion (about $12 million at current rates), according to RBC.
From House Arrest to a Detention Center
The Zamoskvoretsky District Court changed Runets’s restraint measure from house arrest to detention in a pretrial facility, or SIZO, for two months, RBC reported. He had been under house arrest since January 2026 in a separate case concerning the alleged concealment of funds owed in taxes, before investigators expanded the probe to the equipment contract.
Under the article he is charged with — fraud on an especially large scale — Runets faces up to 10 years in prison. The court also seized his stakes in several companies, including the Fox Group of Companies and a number of BitRiver structures.
The En+ Contract at the Center of the Case
The fraud charge concerns the supply of mining equipment to structures of En+, the metals-and-energy holding founded by sanctioned Russian businessman Oleg Deripaska. That places two heavily pressured names — Russia’s largest crypto miner and Deripaska’s industrial empire — on opposite sides of a criminal case.
The dispute traces to Infrastructure of Siberia, an En+ subsidiary, which says it paid more than ₽700 million (about $8.4 million) in advance under a contract with Fox Group, the entity that owns 98% of BitRiver’s management company. A batch of Antminer mining machines due within 32 days was, the claimant says, never delivered. The Arbitration Court of the Irkutsk Region ruled in Infrastructure of Siberia’s favor in April 2025, and after enforcement failed to recover enough assets, a Sverdlovsk court opened bankruptcy monitoring against Fox Group on January 27, 2026.
Investigators now allege Runets never intended to honor the contract and used the prepayment at his own discretion. That criminal damage estimate — nearly ₽1 billion — runs higher than the ₽700 million civil advance at the core of the bankruptcy claim.
Runets Denies the Allegations
Runets has publicly disputed the non-delivery claim. In comments reported earlier by ForkLog, he said the equipment was in fact delivered, that Fox Group is appealing the arbitration ruling, and that he intends to pursue En+ for losses his companies suffered during shutdowns. Neither Runets nor BitRiver had issued a public statement on the July 29 fraud charge and detention order at the time of writing.
The Fall of Russia’s Biggest Miner
The detention caps a steep, year-long decline. Runets founded BitRiver in 2017 and built it into Russia’s market leader, operating roughly 175,000 mining rigs across 15 data centers drawing 533 megawatts, with reported 2024 revenue of about $129 million; Bloomberg estimated his personal fortune at around $230 million in late 2024.
The pressure began with Washington: the U.S. Treasury sanctioned BitRiver in April 2022 over its role in Russia’s technology sector, and in 2023 Japanese financial group SBI cut ties with the miner as it exited Russia. Even so, the company kept expanding, at one point announcing plans to build Russia’s largest AI data center. By late 2024 it was cutting costs and delaying salaries; layoffs followed in early 2025, and by the end of that year most of its senior management had left and offices had closed.
Sanctions, Bankruptcy, and Russia’s Tightening Mining Rules
BitRiver’s collapse is unfolding as Russia hardens its stance on the industry it only recently legalized. President Vladimir Putin signed a law legalizing crypto mining in 2024, but a patchwork of regional bans has since squeezed operators, and the Energy Ministry has drafted a resolution that would ban mining across Moscow and nearby regions through 2032. One BitRiver site in Ingushetia was shut down with law-enforcement involvement in early 2025 under a regional ban.
For a company once positioned as a national champion of cheap-energy mining, the criminal case against its founder turns a financial unravelling into a personal reckoning — and leaves the future of Russia’s largest miner in open question.
