A Moscow court has ordered the founder of Russia's largest cryptocurrency mining company into pre-trial detention, escalating a fraud case that has been building against him since the start of the year. The Zamoskvoretsky District Court of Moscow granted the transfer of BitRiver founder Igor Runets from house arrest to a detention facility on Wednesday, according to local outlet Bits Media.
Runets is now required to remain in custody for at least two months while the investigation continues. He faces charges under Part 4 of Article 159 of the Russian Criminal Code, which covers fraud on an especially large scale committed by an organized group — one of the more severe categories of financial crime in Russian law.
A $12.5 Million Equipment Dispute
At the center of the case is a crypto-mining equipment deal between BitRiver and En+, a major Russian energy conglomerate. Investigators allege that Runets and his company were involved in an arrangement with En+ that resulted in damages of 1 billion rubles, or roughly $12.5 million.
Bits Media reported that the case's progress from here will hinge on the outcome of the investigation, technical examinations of the mining equipment at issue, and witness testimony expected from En+ itself.
Trouble Has Been Building Since January
Wednesday's detention order is not an isolated development. In late January 2026, a Russian court placed BitRiver's parent company, Fox Group, under bankruptcy monitoring over a separate, unresolved $9.2 million debt tied to an unfulfilled equipment supply contract with an En+ subsidiary. Runets was charged with tax evasion around the same time and placed under house arrest, the milder of the two restrictions he has now moved beyond.
BitRiver has long positioned itself as Russia's dominant player in industrial-scale Bitcoin mining, capitalizing on the country's access to cheap energy even as Western sanctions cut it off from much of the global crypto industry. The compounding legal and financial pressure on its founder — first a bankruptcy monitor on its parent company, now a fraud charge carrying an organized-crime designation — points to a firm under considerably more scrutiny at home than its market position abroad would suggest.
