Russian father loses crypto holdings for failing to pay child support debt

The Russian judiciary has confiscated the cryptocurrency of a father of two who failed to pay well over a million rubles in child support to his former spouse.

News of the case, which is a first of its kind, comes after Russia’s constitutional court reaffirmed the property status of digital assets under current law.

Russian father loses his coins to overdue child support payments

The Bailiff Service in Russia’s Krasnodar Krai has settled a child support dispute by selling the cryptocurrency holdings of the debtor, Russian media revealed.

A resident of the western region’s Belorechensky District owed around 1.7 million rubles (over $22,000) in child support payments for two minor children.

The father had been failing to pay the money to his ex-wife for a long time, and the coin confiscation was conducted as part of a court’s order to seize his assets.

A brokerage account for crypto investment was among those frozen, the leading Russian crypto news outlet Bits.media reported Thursday, noting this happens for the first time.

The account had enough cryptocurrency to cover the debt, and the local bailiff’s office arranged the withdrawal of the respective amount through the court system.

Under the Russian law “On Enforcement Proceedings,” bailiffs have the right to seize a debtor’s digital financial assets, explained the regional branch of the Federal Bailiff Service (FBS).

The latter is a law enforcement agency subordinated to the Russian Ministry of Justice.

Besides maintaining security and order within court facilities, its responsibilities include ensuring proper and timely execution of judicial acts as well.

The body confirmed this is the first time in the region’s judicial practice in which a debt is fully covered using cryptocurrencies.

At the same time, it noted that in this particular case, the digital assets were held with a broker and not in a personal wallet of the citizen who defaulted.

Should Russians expect more crypto seizures in the future?

The Russian Federation is yet to comprehensively regulate crypto transactions, and it’s planning to do so in the first half of this year.

That includes determining the status of Bitcoin and the like. According to a new regulatory concept presented by the Bank of Russia in December, these will be recognized as “currency assets.”

Until now, cryptocurrency has been mostly treated as property for the purposes of criminal investigations and court proceedings.

Earlier this week, Russia’s Constitutional Court confirmed that in a case over a property claim on misappropriated stablecoins, as reported by Cryptopolitan.

A bill regulating the seizure of cryptocurrency, also recognizing its property nature, was submitted by the Russian government last spring.

The filing followed media reports that revealed the executive power in Moscow had elaborated a detailed mechanism for the confiscation of digital coins.

These developments came after the Federal Bailiff Service announced in April 2025 that it was exploring ways to convert $90 million worth of seized crypto into revenue for the state.

At the time, the head of the FBS, Dmitriy Aristov, described Bitcoin as a “problematic assets,” when he was asked to comment on the current practice of cryptocurrency seizure in Russia during a meeting of a legislative committee at the Federation Council, the upper house of Russian parliament.

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