Transactions involving virtual assets can become part of a charge under Article 209 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, but the mere fact of purchasing, selling, or transferring a crypto-asset does not prove money laundering. What remains decisive is the criminal origin of the specific asset, the nature of the person's actions, and their awareness of that origin.
What Article 209 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine covers
Part one of Article 209 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine covers the acquisition, possession, use, or disposal of property where the actual circumstances indicate it was obtained through criminal means. The actus reus also includes financial transactions and legal acts involving such property, its transfer or change of form, and actions aimed at concealing or disguising the origin, ownership, rights, source, or location of the property.
Criminal liability does not arise merely because a transaction is atypical or is carried out through a cryptocurrency exchange, a P2P service, or several wallets. The prosecution must prove the full set of statutory elements with respect to specific property and specific conduct by the person.
Criminal origin of property: a conviction for the predicate offence does not replace the need for proof
A separate conviction for the offence that generated the property is not an absolute precondition for prosecuting a charge under Article 209 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. This is consistent with the FATF standard: proving the criminal origin of property should not depend on a prior conviction for the predicate offence.
At the same time, the absence of a separate conviction does not relieve the prosecution of the burden of proving the criminal origin of the specific property that is the subject of the laundering charge. The origin of an asset may be established through a combination of direct and circumstantial evidence, but not through assumptions, the general risk profile of the cryptocurrency sector, or merely the absence of documents on the source of funds.
The mental element: “knew or should have known”
A mandatory element of the offence is that the person knew or should have known that the property was, directly or indirectly, wholly or partly, obtained through criminal means. This awareness must be confirmed by specific circumstances: the content of communications, the nature of the arrangements, the manner in which the asset was obtained, the economic purpose of the transactions, the relationships between participants, the use of concealment tools, and conduct after the transaction.
In a so-called P2P triangle, a crypto-asset seller may receive a hryvnia payment from a third party who has been the victim of fraud, without knowing the source of the funds. Such a situation does not create automatic liability under Article 209 of the Criminal Code. At the same time, a lack of awareness is not presumed: counterparty screening, whether the payer matched the order's terms, the frequency of transactions, exchange warnings, correspondence, and other data are all assessed.
Likewise, the use of someone else's exchange account or wallet may be evidentiary, but on its own does not amount to a completed qualification under Article 209 of the Criminal Code. It is necessary to establish the criminal origin of the property, a specific act with it, and the statutorily required awareness of the person.
Value thresholds in 2026
Under the note to Article 209 of the Criminal Code, laundering is considered committed on a large scale if the value of the property exceeds 6,000 tax-free minimum incomes of citizens, and on an especially large scale if it exceeds 18,000 such minimums.
For the classification of criminal offences, the calculated value of one tax-free minimum is set at the level of the tax social benefit — 50% of the subsistence minimum for an able-bodied person as of 1 January of the relevant year. In 2026, the subsistence minimum is UAH 3,328, and the calculated value is UAH 1,664. A large amount is therefore over UAH 9,984,000, and an especially large amount is over UAH 29,952,000.
Seizure of virtual assets: property must be distinguished from physical evidence
Part ten of Article 170 of the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine expressly provides for the possibility of seizing virtual assets. An objection based solely on a crypto-asset's intangible nature therefore does not, by itself, rebut the possibility of seizure. However, in every case the investigating judge must verify the purpose of the seizure, the asset's legal connection to the criminal proceeding, the risks, whether the property belongs to the person concerned, and the proportionality of the restriction on the right of property.
A separate question is whether a specific crypto-asset meets the criteria for physical evidence under Article 98 of the Criminal Procedure Code. First-instance court practice is not uniform. In the publicly reported cases No. 757/10299/25-k and No. 757/5200/25-k, the same court applied different approaches: in one case it upheld the seizure of assets in an exchange account to preserve evidence, while in the other it lifted the seizure on the basis of the assets' intangibility and insufficient individualisation.
Claims of a lack of individualisation also cannot be treated as a universal rule. In a specific proceeding, assets may be described by the type and quantity of tokens, the blockchain network, the wallet address, the transaction hash, the time of the operation, the exchange account, or the UTXO. The subject of any challenge should therefore usually not be the abstract properties of cryptocurrency, but the deficiencies of the decision recognising the evidence, the prosecutor's motion, and the seizure ruling in the specific case.
The judgment in case No. 757/35628/25-k: significance and limits of its use
On 11 September 2025, the Pecherskyi District Court of Kyiv approved a guilty plea agreement in proceedings under Part 1 of Article 200 and Part 1 of Article 209 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. According to the judgment, the person provided services for depositing, withdrawing, and exchanging cryptocurrency without an NBU authorisation, and subsequent transactions with the assets obtained were classified as laundering.
This judgment is an example of law enforcement in practice, but it should not be treated as binding precedent or as a final resolution of the legal regime applicable to all P2P transactions. The decision was based on a plea agreement, so the court reviewed whether the agreement could be approved rather than forming a comprehensive legal position after a full adversarial examination of the evidence.
The characterisation of “exchanging cryptocurrency without an NBU licence” also requires caution. The Law “On Virtual Assets” has not entered into force as of the date of this material, and the current system does not provide for a universal NBU licence specifically for the purchase and sale of cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency is not electronic money. However, a specific model may contain features of a payment, financial, or currency service that requires authorisation. The assessment depends on the content of the transactions, the intermediary's role, the movement of fiat funds, and the nature of the remuneration.
The Supreme Court's position on the separate trial of an accomplice's case
In a ruling of 22 September 2025 in case No. 463/2671/17, the Joint Chamber of the Criminal Court of Cassation reviewed proceedings in which a person had been convicted, among other things, of aiding in obtaining an unlawful benefit on an especially large scale and laundering funds through their conversion and other transactions.
The Supreme Court disagreed that the separate trial of an accomplice's case, in the absence of the simultaneous conviction of other participants, in itself violates the right to a fair trial. The absence of a judgment against another alleged participant is therefore not, on its own, a ground for acquittal. The defence should focus on proof of the specific person's role, the scope of their intent, the admissibility of the evidence, and establishing the circumstances of the predicate offence without attributing to the person liability for the conduct of others.
Practical areas of analysis for the defence
The defence position in proceedings under Article 209 of the Criminal Code is built individually. Depending on the case materials, priority analysis may be required of: the source of the specific asset and the evidentiary chain between the predicate offence and the property; whether the person's conduct actually consisted of the operations listed in the disposition of Article 209 of the Criminal Code; evidence of knowledge or a duty to know of the asset's criminal origin; transactional data (addresses, hashes, exchange records, orders, communications, and the movement of fiat funds); the legal nature of the services actually provided and whether authorisation requirements apply; the purpose, grounds, proportionality, and duration of the seizure, as well as the individualisation of the assets; and the admissibility of digital evidence and compliance with the procedure for obtaining and recording it.
Conclusion
Article 209 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine can apply to transactions involving virtual assets, but the cryptocurrency character of a transaction does not replace the need to prove the elements of the criminal offence. To sustain a charge, the criminal origin of specific property, a statutorily defined act with it, and the person's awareness of that origin must all be established.
Court practice on the seizure, evidentiary status, and regulatory treatment of crypto-assets remains dynamic. For that reason, conclusions drawn from individual first-instance rulings or plea-based judgments should not be applied to other situations without checking the actual circumstances and the current wording of the legislation.
Disclaimer. This material is of a purely informational nature, does not constitute individual legal advice, and does not guarantee a particular outcome in a specific criminal proceeding. The legal assessment depends on the circumstances of the case, the current wording of the legislation, and the available evidence.
Sources used: Criminal Code of Ukraine, Article 209; Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine, Articles 98 and 170; Tax Code of Ukraine, subparagraph 169.1.1 and paragraph 5 of subsection 1 of section XX; Law of Ukraine “On the State Budget of Ukraine for 2026”; Law of Ukraine “On Virtual Assets” (status: not yet in force); Joint statement of the financial regulators on the status of cryptocurrencies in Ukraine; Judgment of the Pecherskyi District Court of Kyiv of 11.09.2025 in case No. 757/35628/25-k; Ruling of the Joint Chamber of the Criminal Court of Cassation of the Supreme Court of 22.09.2025 in case No. 463/2671/17; Thematic review of the practice of the Criminal Court of Cassation of the Supreme Court for 2025; FATF Recommendations, Recommendation 3 and Interpretive Note; A. Radieva — “Cryptocurrency in the Courts' Crosshairs: From Seizure to Division of Property.”