39-year-old Igor Runets founded the company Bitriver in 2017 and built it into a crypto mining empire with 15 data centers and more than 175,000 servers.
Bitriver was added to the U.S. list of sanctioned companies after Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
According to the Russian business newspaper Kommersant, Runets is said to have found himself on a collision course with a company in the business empire of Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska over a large debt.
Runets' company is also in conflict with electricity suppliers, according to the newspaper.
