Moscow's Zamoskvoretsky District Court ordered Runets held in a pre-trial detention facility (known in Russia as SIZO) for two months, pending investigation into allegations that his Fox Group of Companies took a $7.9 million prepayment from OOO "Infrastruktura Sibiri," an En+ Group subsidiary, for a batch of Antminer cryptocurrency mining rigs in 2023 and then delivered neither the equipment nor a refund. The alleged damages total approximately 1 billion rubles, or roughly $12.5 to $13 million at the exchange rate at time of reporting, according to reporting by ForkLog and Russian regional outlet www1.ru.

"Igor Runets, the founder of BitRiver, has been charged with large-scale fraud related to the supply of cryptocurrency mining equipment to En+ structures," ForkLog reported following the court ruling. Per the contractual terms cited in court documents, as reported by www1.ru, the paid batch of Antminers was supposed to be delivered within 32 days, a window that was never met.

This fraud charge is separate from the case that originally put Runets under house arrest in late January 2026. That earlier proceeding involved three counts under Article 199.2 of Russia's Criminal Code, which covers the concealment of funds intended for tax payment. The Arbitration Court of Sverdlovsk Oblast opened insolvency supervision proceedings against Fox Group, the parent entity holding a 98% stake in BitRiver, on January 27, 2026, following a $9.2 million insolvency claim filed by OOO "Infrastruktura Sibiri," the same En+ subsidiary now at the center of the new fraud allegation. En+ is a major industrial and energy conglomerate with substantial hydropower and aluminum operations in Siberia, historically linked to oligarch Oleg Deripaska. Deripaska was personally sanctioned by OFAC in 2018, with those measures subsequently modified, and En+ itself faced related designations during that period, adding geopolitical weight to the conglomerate's involvement in the BitRiver proceedings.

BitRiver's decline has been swift for a company that once controlled more than half of Russia's industrial mining sector. At its peak, the firm operated 15 data centers running over 175,000 servers with a combined capacity of 533 megawatts, leveraging Siberia's surplus hydroelectric power to keep energy costs competitive. The company was founded in 2017, headquartered in Switzerland with Russian operational subsidiaries, and sanctioned by the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control on April 20, 2022 under Executive Order 14024, making it the first cryptocurrency mining company ever designated by OFAC. Ten Russian subsidiaries were designated simultaneously, a scope that signals the breadth of the action and helps explain the scale of the operational disruption that followed. That designation severely restricted the company's access to dollar-denominated payment channels and imported equipment supply chains. Social media accounts have been inactive since early 2022. Court notices sent to BitRiver entities have been returned unclaimed. Multiple data centers have closed.

The company's collapse is unfolding against a broader tightening of Russia's mining environment. The Energy Ministry drafted a six-year ban on crypto mining in Moscow and surrounding regions running from July 1, 2026 through December 31, 2032, citing 65 data centers drawing 734 megawatts in the Moscow area alone. Russia's State Duma also passed comprehensive crypto legislation, with most provisions taking effect September 1, 2026, legalizing trading through licensed intermediaries while tightening controls on peer-to-peer activity and industrial mining.

Russia still holds a significant share of global bitcoin hashrate, estimated at 13 to 17 percent in Q1 2026. That places Russia behind the United States at roughly 37 percent and likely behind China at approximately 12 percent, with analysts noting that Russia may be ceding its long-held second-place global ranking to China. As BitRiver's capacity drains out of the network, analysts cited by CoinDesk expect the remaining hashrate to consolidate among surviving domestic operators rather than disappear entirely. But the rebalancing has geographic implications that extend well beyond Russia's borders.

Ethiopia stands out as the most likely regional beneficiary. Its Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) hydroelectric project has created an energy surplus that the government is actively directing toward data center and mining investment, with a relatively open regulatory posture toward mining investment. In South Asia, Pakistan, India, and Nepal all hold significant untapped hydropower capacity and growing technical communities that could absorb displaced mining capital over the coming years. For buyers in those markets, the bankruptcy liquidation of Fox Group assets may also put discounted Antminer equipment, the same model type at the center of the fraud allegation, onto secondary markets accessible through UAE or Turkish intermediaries. Sub-Saharan Africa's on-chain transaction volume reached $205 billion over the past 12 months, a 52 percent year-over-year increase, driven largely by trading and payments rather than mining, but the collapse of a geopolitically exposed mining giant adds weight to regional arguments for building sovereign, locally controlled crypto infrastructure.

For the global Bitcoin network, the erosion of Russian industrial mining capacity does not pose an immediate security concern. The more durable lesson from BitRiver's fall is structural: concentrating hashrate in jurisdictions facing geopolitical pressure, domestic legal instability, and shifting energy policy simultaneously creates fragility that no single company can hedge against indefinitely.