Voters in Ukraine Bribed with Bitcoin

A source in the Ministry of Internal Affairs told ForkLog that 4.3 million hryvnias was far from the full sum employed to bribe the voters, however, reliable evidence is available for that amount only as yet. Bitcoin in that case acted as an intermediary transaction medium: cryptocurrency was exchanged for hryvnias at online exchanges, and the bribed voters received a remittance in hryvnias to their plastic card.

Apparently, falsifiers and corruptionists decided to use bitcoin’s anonymity to conceal the true funding source for the ‘campaign’. Notably, apart from the aforementioned information, personal data of people who had sold their votes at recent elections also became publicly available. Those are card numbers, and last and first names.

Screen shots provided by Filatov on his Facebook page are shown hereunder.

As it seems, completely different social groups in Ukraine start embracing useful features of bitcoin and blockchain. Earlier ForkLog covered a group of extortionists dubbed Dillinger team who, while residing in Ukraine (allegedly in the city of Kharkiv), scare call about bombs in major malls and exhibition halls in Russia. The criminals probably decided to make use of frigid political relations between Ukraine in Russia to raise some doremi.

It appears that such instances of cryptocurrency usage by different criminals and corruptionists in Ukraine will only gather pace. While a part of local society does its best to accelerate integration of digital currency and blockchain in real sector, the other part has apparently found a convenient application of new technologies.