The founder of Russia’s largest bitcoin miner BitRiver, Igor Runets, has been placed under house arrest on multiple tax evasion charges as the company faces mounting financial and legal pressure.
Runets was detained on Friday and accused of concealing assets to evade taxes, with his lawyers given a brief window to appeal the house arrest before it is fully enforced.
The arrest comes as BitRiver confronts a potential bankruptcy after a subsidiary of En+ Group filed a $9.2 million insolvency claim linked to allegedly undelivered mining equipment.
Founded in 2017, BitRiver once operated 15 data centres and controlled more than half of Russia’s industrial crypto-mining capacity, but has reportedly shut several facilities and accumulated significant energy debts.
The company was sanctioned by the United States in 2022 following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, limiting its access to international clients and financial infrastructure.
Court-ordered account freezes tied to the insolvency dispute could further disrupt operations at a firm that has already seen a large share of its senior management depart.
Analysts say a collapse of BitRiver would likely accelerate consolidation in Russia’s mining sector, mirroring global pressures on miners after the bitcoin halving squeezed margins and forced diversification into AI and cloud computing.
At the time of reporting, Bitcoin price was $78,724.64.