According to CoinMeta, Igor Ruenets, the founder of Russia's largest crypto mining company Bitriver, has been transferred to a pre-trial detention center by a Russian court and is facing fraud charges. Ruenets is accused of "large-scale" fraud; investigators claim that he failed to deliver equipment to EN and its subsidiaries, resulting in losses of over 1 billion rubles (about 12.5 million US dollars). In 2023, Ruenets signed a equipment supply contract worth 8 million US dollars with EN, but failed to fulfill it. Ruenets is a pioneer in Russian crypto mining; he began establishing crypto mining data centers in Siberia in 2017 and expanded operations to 15 data centers, owning over 175,000 servers. Due to a six-year ban implemented by the government in 10 regions, Bitriver had to close several mining centers and faced financial problems. In February, a regional arbitration court initiated bankruptcy proceedings against its controlling shareholder, the Fox group, which holds 98% of the authorized capital of Bitriver.