He is in Chile. The company linked was liquidated in 2021 (including other companies called Sarafan that he created in the past). How did you deduce that money goes to Russia?
Can we guarantee the same thing about you? What stops you from hiring Russian contractors and paying them in crypto? Of course, you can say: 'Well, he is Russian, so it is more likely that he does that, so it is fair to treat him with more suspicion.'
And you know what? Some other people might say: 'Well, this guy is black, and black guys are more likely to commit crimes, so it makes sense if we follow him around the store to make sure that he doesn't steal anything.' And some other people might say: 'Well, he looks like he might be a Muslim, and radical Islamists are more likely to be terrorists, so it is fair that we select him for some additional screening at the airport.'
Would you agree with all those people as well? And if not, what do you think is the difference between you and them?
> Numbers made up, and just for illustrative purposes.
Which makes it pretty dishonest, especially when you augment it with mixing month and year ;)
> Russians overseas send a grand total of $5M back to the country every month.
Remittances to Russian individuals are like $25B/year; this is a whole lot. Yah, oil industry revenues are 10x higher (after having about a 20-30% bite taken out of them by sanctions), but of course, in order to get that revenue a decent chunk of the hard currency has to flow back out of Russia to pay for various O&G related expenses.
It would be nice, of course, to trim down the O&G revenues more, but any policy actions that countries take against a hostile state need to hurt the adversary more than themselves, and it's not too clear how to go further on O&G and meet this criteria.