According to Brian Krebs’ post with references to The Tico Times and La Nacion, the reason of website libertyreserve.com being blocked and payment system Liberty Reserve being shut down was the fact that when payments were made, the owners of the system did not check users’ documents properly.
The researcher states that earlier this week Spanish police arrested the founder of Liberty Reserve Arthur Budovsky Belanchuk, 39. Citizen of Costa Rica, born Ukrainian, was the owner of the payment system registered in Costa Rica. He was previously convicted for money fraud. This time the charges are the same.
According to Krebs, when making payments the owners of the system did not check users’ documents properly. As a result, money transfer between different countries could be carried out anonymously, which is contrary to international law.
Investigation of the case against Arthur was being conducted since 2011, but only now the police gathered necessary evidence to press charges.
Despite the fact that Arthur stole quite a large amount of money, some Liberty Reserve users managed to save their funds. Thus, the host Off-sho.re holds $25,000.
