A7’s $6.9bn forgery route into global banks using front companies. Fake invoices.

Kremlin-backed A7 used forged paperwork and front companies to move more than $6.9bn through global banks, according to the Financial Times.

The Financial Times reported on 21 September 2026 that it obtained hundreds of thousands of internal files from A7, a Russian payments group set up after Western governments cut major Russian banks off Swift following the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The paper says those files show A7 funnelled more than $6.9bn through the international banking system between late 2024, when the group was established, and August 2025.

That is the primary claim. It is not independently audited public bank data. It rests on a leak analysed by the FT. Secondary outlets have repeated the same figures; they have not published a separate forensic reconstruction of the same files.

What A7 is, and who stands behind it

A7 was launched in Russia and Kyrgyzstan by Moldovan businessman Ilan Shor (also spelled Șor), with support from Promsvyazbank (PSB), a Russian state-owned bank with close ties to the defence sector.

• Shor was previously convicted in Moldova in connection with a large-scale bank fraud.

The Kremlin has promoted A7 as a flagship alternative for Russian import payments after Swift access was restricted. Shor has publicly described the system as “immune to sanctions.”

Earlier FT and Wall Street Journal reporting already described A7 as

• A state-backed sanctions-evasion network, mixing bills of exchange, crypto and conventional banking.

A7 has claimed large shares of Russian foreign-trade payments; those self-reported volumes have not been independently verified at the scale advertised.

How the FT says the money moved

According to the FT and outlets summarising its investigation, A7 did not invent a new payments rail that replaced Swift. It used old-fashioned layering:

• Front companies and established businesses in third countries, including the UAE, Hong Kong and Kyrgyzstan

• Cash placed into accounts that did have access to Swift

• Those accounts then paying suppliers abroad, often in China and Hong Kong

• An “industrial-scale” forgery operation producing counterfeit invoices and altered goods descriptions and customs codes so the paperwork would survive anti-money-laundering checks

The FT identified around 100 front companies.

Reporting based on the same investigation says a now-defunct Kyrgyz state trading company accounted for about $2.4bn, with UAE-based names including Gimli (about $600m) and Xentra (nearly $400m) among the larger conduits.

China and Hong Kong were the main destinations: about $1.55bn to Chinese banks and $1.81bn to Hong Kong, according to Norwegian and Russian-language summaries of the FT work.

Those destination splits should be treated as FT-derived, not as confirmed bank disclosures.

Some payments, the FT says, related to sensitive war-linked goods and purchases connected to Russian security services.

Public summaries do not publish a full itemised list of those goods. Relabelling examples reported second-hand include military-related items described as ordinary products such as tempered glass. That is an allegation from leaked internal chat/documents, not a court finding.

Banks named in the reporting

Names and Figures attributed to the FT leak for late 2024 to August 2025,

• 1 — First Abu Dhabi Bank
  Seventeen A7-linked entities made more than $1.8bn in outbound payments.

• 2 — Standard Chartered, Hong Kong
  Accounts received $1.1bn from A7-linked entities.

• 3 — DBS, Hong Kong
  $273mn sent over the same period.

• 4 — Citigroup clients
  $74mn received.

• 5 — Deutsche Bank clients in Europe
  About $18mn.

• 6 — JPMorgan Chase and DBS accounts
  A7-linked entities had use of accounts. No separate dollar total was published in the summaries reviewed.

Receiving a payment from a third-country company is not the same as knowingly serving a sanctioned Russian bank. Correspondent banking often leaves the receiving bank seeing a UAE or Hong Kong name, not “A7 / PSB / Russian MOD.” That is precisely why forged invoices matter: they are designed to look like ordinary trade.

Bank responses reported so far are limited. First Abu Dhabi told the FT it

• “Takes appropriate action and engages with the relevant authorities where matters of potential concern are identified and as required.”

Standard Chartered, Citigroup, JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank were reported to say they were committed to AML reporting but otherwise declined to comment in detail. Absence of a detailed public rebuttal is not proof of guilt.

An FT podcast accompanying the investigation said

• Standard Chartered raised questions about inflows from Kyrgyzstan, after which A7 shifted more activity toward the UAE.

That suggests some controls fired. It also suggests the network adapted rather than stopped.

What this does — and does not — prove

Supported by the available reporting

• A7 is Kremlin-linked, PSB-backed, and marketed as a Swift workaround.

• The FT says a large internal leak shows more than $6.9bn passing through named international banks via fronts and forged trade documents.

• Some of those flows are alleged to involve military or security-service procurement.

• Major banks’ customers and accounts in Hong Kong, the UAE, Singapore and Europe appear in the paper trail.

Not established from public sources

• That each named bank knowingly processed sanctioned Russian defence payments.

• That $6.9bn is a complete or audited total of all A7 banking activity (A7 has claimed far larger overall volumes through other channels, including crypto and bills of exchange).

• The precise legal status of every counterparty on every invoice.

• That sanctions “failed” in a simple sense. Swift exclusion did force Russia into slower, costlier, fraud-heavy workarounds. That is a partial success of policy and a partial failure of downstream AML.

Sources

Primary investigation
https://www.ft.com/content/3848a4ad-1426-4352-ba86-ef1279c4ffd1

FT podcast / transcript on the same investigation
https://www.ft.com/content/3d84cb4d-6dcc-42a5-8a54-3505adc0e867

Earlier FT background on A7
https://www.ft.com/content/8ea9eb6d-736a-4ccf-aa6b-3f9a9fb81294
https://www.ft.com/content/5eff10ae-aa4c-4756-a807-6635a4762166

WSJ background on A7 as a state-backed network
https://www.wsj.com/world/russia/russias-hottest-startup-is-a-state-backed-sanctions-evasion-network-7afc488c

Secondary reports of the 21 September 2026 FT story
https://www.thebanker.com/content/8e6f23f1-8791-428e-baf7-6dc255bf59da
https://africa.businessinsider.com/local/markets/how-a-russian-backed-network-linked-to-2-african-countries-moved-dollar69-billion/rfqr39d
https://tradersunion.com/news/financial-news/show/3420285-a7-sanctions-evasion-global-banks/
https://en.oninvest.com/article/ft-citi-deutsche-and-other-banks-processed-7-billion-in-russian-payments-in-defiance-of-sanctions
https://europeanbusinessmagazine.com/kremlin-backed-forgery-operation-channelled-6-9-billion-through-global-banks/
https://www.pymnts.com/news/banking/2026/russian-fintech-allegedly-laundered-6-9-billion-via-global-banks/
https://www.benzinga.com/markets/forex/26/09/61912764/6-9-billion-in-russia-linked-payments-reportedly-slipped-through-global-banks-despite-sanctions-elizabeth-warren-slams-trump-as-citi-deutsche-bank-and-jpmorgan-get-caught-in-the-money-trai
https://www.finansavisen.no/finans/2026/09/22/8382160/skjulte-militaerkjop-russisk-nettverk-lurte-seg-inn-i-swift
https://theins.ru/news/297370

Related investigations
https://meduza.io/en/news/2026/04/29/report-abramovich-tied-to-russian-payment-platform-created-to-evade-sanctions-serving-drone-makers
https://stories.opensourcecentre.org/the-big-shor/