British payments specialist Michael Donald, a former board member of Visa UK, appears in documents related to VexPay, a Kyrgyz payment platform that the Kremlin-linked A7 shadow banking network has promoted as an alternative to SWIFT. According to meeting minutes from inside A7 reviewed by the Financial Times, in 2025 fugitive Moldovan oligarch Ilan Shor named Donald as VexPay’s chief executive. Donald denies ever working for the company or agreeing to run it.
The Insider found that Donald and his business had ties to Russia well before the VexPay episode. In 2020, ImageNPay, a company founded founded by Donald, identified Russia and other former Soviet states as key markets and used Russian programmers while attempting to enter the Russian market via the Skolkovo Innovation Center outside Moscow.
A man named Dmitry Kuptsov also held a 27.2% stake in the British company ImageNPay. A businessman with the same name, described by Bloomberg as an Irish passport holder born in Russia, appeared in luxury real estate deals in Monaco and was also connected to ImageNPay’s circle through another Monaco company.
A7 is a Russian payment network created by Shor in cooperation with Russian state-owned Promsvyazbank, which serves Russia’s defense sector. The network’s purpose is to process international payments for Russian companies amid sanctions and restricted access to the Western financial system. As the Financial Times previously reported, from late 2024 through August 2025 the network moved more than $6.9 billion through international banks using hundreds of intermediary companies — and, according to the FT, ran an “industrial-scale forgery operation.”
On Oct. 1, the U.S. Treasury Department designated A7 as a “significant transnational criminal organization.” U.S. authorities say the network disguises payments linked to sanctioned entities as ordinary trade transactions and uses companies in third countries to gain access to the global financial system. According to the Treasury Department, A7 intermediaries processed more than $17 billion from January 2025 through June 2026.
Shor named Michael Donald as the head of VexPay – which he denies
The new documents obtained by the FT date from the period March to August 2025. They indicate that A7 representatives took part in developing VexPay in Kyrgyzstan. The project was pitched to local officials as an alternative international payment channel that would allow transactions to be processed outside the conventional SWIFT system.
According to meeting minutes, Shor introduced VexPay’s new management at an Aug. 12 meeting in Moscow and named Michael Donald as one of the platform’s executives. Donald confirmed to the FT that he attended the Moscow meeting but said he was never an employee or director of VexPay and never agreed to take the position. He said he was only advising Kyrgyz state company Processing KG on international payments, card acceptance, Apple Pay, and relations with Visa. Donald also says he has never met or spoken with Shor.
His statements contrast with the meeting minutes described by the FT, in which Shor is said to have introduced Donald to other participants as a VexPay executive. The document’s description alone, however, does not prove that Donald accepted the position or took part in any illegal activity.
Formally, VexPay is linked to Kyrgyz state company Processing KG, not A7, and the Kyrgyz side denies that the company is under outside control. The leaked documents outlined by the FT, however, show that Shor and A7 employees took part in discussions about the project’s structure, accounts, staffing, and technical setup.
The Insider finds Donald’s earlier ties to Russia and Skolkovo
Using open sources, The Insider found that as early as 2020 — five years before the meeting in Moscow, Michael Donald was actively seeking opportunities to expand his payments business in Russia. In June 2020, the official Skolkovo website published an interview with Donald in which he said ImageNPay viewed Russia and the CIS countries as key markets for the coming years and was already using a team of Russian programmers. Donald described Russia as a major fintech market and praised Russian payments developers.
ImageNPay took part in Skolkovo’s Soft-Landing program, a two-week course for foreign companies seeking to enter the Russian market. The next step could have been obtaining Skolkovo resident status, which can provide tax breaks and access to grants. In the interview, Donald called Skolkovo an excellent place for a foreign company seeking to enter the Russian market.
Donald’s ties to Russia went back even further. His public LinkedIn profile lists Moscow among his work locations and Russian among the languages he speaks. One recommendation posted on the social network says he helped arrange business contacts and distribution in Russia, including helping establish relationships with the Ritz-Carlton and Grand Havana Club in Moscow.
ImageNPay’s shareholder was born in Russia and appeared in Monaco luxury real estate deals
The Insider found that ImageNPay’s Russia ties went beyond its attempt to enter the market through Skolkovo. Corporate filings for Britain’s ImageNPay UK Limited from 2020 list Dmitry Kuptsov as a shareholder.
A document filed with Companies House on July 1, 2020, shows that after 250 ordinary shares were transferred from Switzerland’s ImageNPay AG, they were divided among four owners. Michael Donald received 127 shares, Dmitry Kuptsov 68, Mark Schlittler 42 and Xupery Limited 13. Kuptsov controlled 27.2% of ImageNPay UK, making him the second-largest shareholder after Donald, who held 50.8%.
A businessman with the same name previously appeared in a Bloomberg investigation into Monaco’s luxury real estate market. In April 2026, the outlet cited leaked emails and documents from the Mareterra development project while reporting on two little-known aviation executives: Dmitry Kuptsov and Konstantin Krivchenko. Bloomberg said both were born in Russia but hold Irish passports.
According to Bloomberg, in 2017 Kuptsov and Krivchenko planned to buy four villas in the Mareterra luxury development for 100 million euros each. Special-purpose companies were created for the purchases and were approved by Monaco authorities in late 2017. The buyers later missed payments on some of the properties and eventually scaled back their plans to a single villa of about 2,300 square meters — still replete with a hammam, sauna, movie theater, massage rooms, and a wine-tasting room. A representative for the businessmen declined to comment to Bloomberg at the time.
Bloomberg’s investigation focused on the origins of money in Monaco’s ultra-luxury property market. The outlet reviewed documents from the Mareterra project, including correspondence among the developer, notaries, banks, and prospective buyers. Bloomberg separately stressed that publication of the documents did not mean the people named in them had committed any wrongdoing.
Kuptsov’s connection to ImageNPay’s circle can also be traced through another company in Monaco corporate records. In September 2018, Dmitry Kuptsov was appointed manager of Monaco-registered FM-CRAFT, according to the official Journal de Monaco. He replaced Konstantin Krivchenko, the same person who appeared with Kuptsov in Bloomberg’s real estate investigation. The document lists Kuptsov’s Monaco address as 54 Boulevard du Jardin Exotique.
FM-CRAFT was engaged in the design, purchase, sale, import, export, and rental of pleasure yachts and related equipment. Kuptsov stepped down as manager in April 2022 and was replaced by Maria Christova Mundt.
By then, Mundt was already connected to Donald’s business. Companies House records show that she became a director of ImageNPay UK on Sept. 1, 2021, and she remains in the role. The British registry lists her address as 27 Boulevard de Belgique in Monaco, the same address that appears in the official notice of her appointment as FM-CRAFT manager. In August 2024, FM-CRAFT’s owners decided to dissolve the company early and appointed Mundt as liquidator.
Taken together, the documents show several points of overlap: Dmitry Kuptsov owned more than a quarter of Britain’s ImageNPay, a person with the same name managed FM-CRAFT in Monaco, and he was later replaced in that role by current ImageNPay director Maria Kristova Mundt.
The Insider, however, was unable to find a document bearing a unique identifier directly linking ImageNPay shareholder Dmitry Kuptsov to the person of the same name who is associated with FM-CRAFT and the Bloomberg investigation.
