Under the radar: Tracing the life of a Lithuanian wanted in a $96 billion racket from a Kerala beach town

Turns out, he hardly knew him.

On March 11, the Kerala Police, in coordination with the International Police Coordination Unit of the Central Bureau of Investigation (IPCU-CBI), arrested Aleksej Besciokov, a 46-year-old Lithuanian citizen and resident of Russia, from the house that Salim owned near the Varkala beach.

The CBI said Besciokov is wanted by US authorities on a number of charges, including money laundering. He will stand trial before the Eastern District Court of Virginia.

Earlier this year, Besciokov was indicted in the US for allegedly facilitating money laundering by transnational criminal organisations through Garantex, a Russian cryptocurrency exchange.

On March 7, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the unsealing of the indictment against Besciokov.

According to the DOJ indictment, Besciokov was Garantex’s primary technical administrator, responsible for obtaining and maintaining critical Garantex infrastructure, as well as reviewing and approving transactions.

Around three years ago, on April 5, 2022, the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control had sanctioned Garantex for its role in allegedly “facilitating money laundering of funds from ransomware actors and darknet markets”.

The DOJ indictment says that between March 2021 and December 2023, “Garantex processed at least approximately $1.2 million from, and to, three different darknet markets that specialized in drug sales and child sexual abuse material”.

Besciokov and Garantex’s Russian co-founder, Aleksandr Mira Serda, are accused of processing at least $96 billion in cryptocurrency transactions since 2019.

Besciokov and Serda allegedly received hundreds of millions in criminal proceeds, which were used to facilitate several crimes, including hacking, ransomware, terrorism, and drug trafficking.

“Winter is coming…” The Game of Thrones reference in the message that Besciokov sent may have been accidental, but with his cover blown, the note that now sits on Salim’s phone carries a sense of foreboding.

A man in his own world

Varkala, with its jagged cliff beach that stretches on for 3 km, is a mix of spirituality and revelry. The Papanasam beach holds religious significance for Hindus, who come to perform rituals and immerse the ashes of the deceased in the sea.

Over the last decade, it has also drawn revellers from across the country and beyond, even surpassing Kovalam in popularity. Known for its red laterite formations and panoramic views of the Arabian Sea, the Varkala Cliff features cafes, restaurants and shops catering to the many tourists who throng the beach, both domestic and foreign.

It was here, amid the beachgoers and the revellers, that Besciokov, “quiet” and “reserved”, found his safe haven, where he effortlessly slipped in, without eliciting attention or prying questions.

So every year, Besciokov would come down to Varkala — often with his wife Yulia, 46, and son Feliks, 10 — where he rented Salim’s two-storeyed, four-bedroom house. His recent trip to Varkala, which began on February 11, however, lasted only a month.

It was in 2016 that Besciokov first approached Salim seeking his house on rent. “He came with a Russian friend back then and introduced himself as a computer engineer. He had only one condition: even though he would stay for only three months a year, the house should not be rented to anyone else for the rest of the year. Besides his family, he frequently bought several Russian friends to stay at the house over the years. We never had any reason to distrust him or his friends,” says Salim.

This time too, he was with Yulia, their son and the family of his friend Kirill (wife Tataina and their baby).

Salim said Besciokov usually timed his visits to get away from Russia’s winter months. “He liked the weather in Kerala, he liked the beaches and the sun here.”

Salim’s family, among the first movers in Varkala’s thriving tourism industry, has put up two of their properties on rent. “My father was an engineer with the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, and I worked as an accountant in the Gulf. We sort of started the trend of renting properties to foreign tourists in Varkala. Now everyone does it. When Aleksej came here, he mentioned that he had a drilling ship maintenance and construction business in Russia. That mutual connection to oil fields might have influenced my decision to rent the property to him,” says Salim.

Showing a copy of Besciokov’s recent Indian tourist e-visa on his phone, Salim says there was nothing suspicious about the documents. The e-visa was issued on February 2, 2024, and is valid for five years, expiring on January 31, 2029. He adds that there had never been an issue with Besciokov’s Form C, the mandatory registration form that hosts of foreign guests must submit to the Foreigners Regional Registration Officer (FRRO) within 24 hours of arrival to help authorities track and locate them.

“If the Indian authorities knew he was a criminal, wouldn’t they have caught him at the airport?” Salim wonders, adding that Besciokov opened a bank account in India and carried out online transactions.

Besciokov initially paid a rent of Rs 1,75,000 a year, which went up to Rs 5 lakh over the years after considerable persuasion from Salim. “Whenever I asked for a rent hike, he would claim to be a simple man with a modest financial background. I told him this year that I needed Rs 5 lakh since my children’s weddings were coming up. Even then, he paid only Rs 4.5 lakh in two instalments. I have provided all the transaction details to the police,” he says.

From all accounts, Besciokov and his family led as unobtrusive a life as possible while in Varkala.

“They rarely interacted with local residents and others. They did not eat out much either. They mostly cooked at home and ate fruits, vegetables, and fish, as far as I know. They weren’t particularly into Indian cuisine,” says Salim, who lives with his family a kilometre away.

Athira, a worker at a nearby grocery shop, recalls that the family usually bought bananas and canned tuna. She says that, unlike many other tourists, they rarely engaged in small talk with anyone. But she remembers “something interesting”: Besciokov, his wife and son all had similar closely cropped haircuts, which at different times were dyed blonde, pink or purple.

Salim describes Besciokov as tall and lean, someone who appeared younger than his actual age. “I would see him three or four times during each visit. Whenever I went to the house, he would be working on his laptop. He would often be in shorts and round-neck T-shirts,” he says.

Besciokov usually moved around on a second-hand scooter that he bought. Police are currently trying to trace the previous owner of the scooter to find potential associates of Besciokov in Varkala.

Salim says that Besciokov often came across as tight-fisted. “Once, he complained about how hot it was in the house. I suggested that he buy an air conditioner for himself, but he never did. After that, he never mentioned the heat again.”

“In fact, he has not bought any furniture except for what was already in the house when I handed it over to him. The only time he made any change was when he painted a wall green to hang pictures and some study material for his son. He painted the wall himself and later reverted to the original colour after some days,” says Salim.

Recalling his interactions with Besciokov, neighbour Hashim, a taxi driver, says, “He used to work long hours, as the lights were often left on late into the night. He never exchanged smiles or pleasantries with me, nor did he ever hire my car.”

Another neighbour, who wished to remain anonymous, says Besciokov was different from many other foreign visitors who wandered around late at night. “He usually returned home by 9 pm and seemed to be working on his computer until early morning before going to sleep.”

What was he doing in Varkala then? While it’s an aspect the police and the agencies are probing, the Kerala Police said he was on a valid tourist visa.

Thiruvananthapuram Rural SP K S Sudarsan said, “His electronic gadgets have been handed over to the CBI. He had a local bank account, but nothing suspicious was found in it. He was probably careful not to indulge in any illegal activities during his stay in India. We have come to know that the US agencies tracked him by monitoring the social media use of his wife.’’

The arrest

The External Affairs Ministry (EAM), acting on a request from the US under the Extradition Act of 1962, obtained a provisional arrest warrant against Besciokov from Delhi’s Patiala House Court on March 10. The CBI received intelligence about his presence in Varkala and passed this on to the local police. Acting on the tip-off, the Varkala police conducted searches of homestays in the area.

On the evening of March 11, civil police officer Jojin Raj was enquiring in the neighbourhood when he spotted Besciokov on the balcony of the house. “I quickly went up. On seeing me, he went inside the house. I started knocking on the door and, after a few minutes, he opened it. He was all dressed up, with his bags packed. I asked for his passport, and the details matched. He then attempted to bribe me with a handful of Rs 500 notes. I told him to wait and called my senior officers. They arrived and took him into custody,” Jojin explains, adding that it was only the next day that he realised the extent of Besciokov’s criminal activities.

The police seized two laptops, two mobile phones, and some documents from the house. They later reported that while Besciokov’s friend Kirill left Varkala on March 6, Besciokov’s family, along with Krill’s wife and baby, left for Russia early morning March 11, hours before he was arrested.

Police are investigating Besciokov’s financial transactions and potential links to local residents but have not identified any suspects so far. He was later presented before the Patiala House Court in New Delhi, and will later be extradited to the US.

Varkala DySP Gopakumar, one of the senior officers who took Besciokov into custody, stated that the Lithuanian remained in Varkala because he was worried about getting caught at the airport.

Gopakumar says, “He remained very calm even after his arrest. He told the police that he was planning to escape to Goa and had visited other Indian cities like Chennai and Mumbai in the past.”

With inputs from Shaju Philip, Thiruvananthapuram