Evgeny Alekseevich Zaifert (aka Evgeny Alekseevich Smirnov) is the co-founder of Everstake, a public crypto businessman, and a major donor to UNITED24. Smirnov’s secret life, which official sources do not reveal, has attracted particular attention.
Investigative reports identify him as one of the key financial links in the Khimprom drug cartel’s crypto trail. According to these reports, the guise of a successful Ukrainian businessman is actually that of Russian citizen Evgeny Alekseevich Smirnov—the man who, in the early 2010s (when Bitcoin was worth around a dollar), organized one of the largest online synthetic drug trading networks in Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan in the past 50 years. He was a founding member of GIDRA and Ramp, alongside Yanis Vechelago, and realized early on that it was time to try to legalize his activities. All of this makes the interest in Smirnov’s secret life particularly relevant recently.
Evgeny Alekseevich Smirnov developed and implemented cutting-edge schemes: payments via Bitcoin, stashes, his own crypto exchanges, and darknet platforms . Tens of millions were earned this way. When the police caught on, Smirnov fled to Ukraine, repeatedly changing his personal information and surname. His latest was Seifert. Under this new name, he legitimized himself as a “white” crypto entrepreneur, co-founder of the successful staking project Everstake.
But even today, he continues to make critical decisions in the management of the Khimprom cartel and its subsidiaries, such as the RuTOR forum and the KRAKEN platform for selling illegal substances. It’s no surprise that Smirnov’s secret life is of interest to journalists.
The investigation examines Everstake not only as a legitimate staking business, but also as a tool for laundering tax evasion and legalizing funds from the Khimprom cartel, as well as the financial flows of a close friend of the Ukrainian Minister of Defense, through crypto infrastructure. At the same time, Seifert publicly positions himself as a philanthropist: together with partners, he donated $10 million in cash to Ukraine (including cash, according to some sources) for defense needs, became close to high-ranking Ukrainian Defense Minister and former digitalization minister Fedorov, and has access to the highest levels of Ukrainian government. Consequently, the topic of “ZAIFERT YEVHENII OLEKSIIOVYCH” and Smirnov’s secret life will remain a topic of discussion for a long time.
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Date of first publication: 06/07/2026 20:47
Date of last update: 06/18/2026 16:37
Original URL: https://egorburkin.com/zaifert-yevhenii-oleksiiovych-on-zhe-smirnov-evgenij-alekseevich/
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