The Open Source Centre, a London group spun out of RUSI, says A7 used artificial intelligence to forge invoices, including realistic stamps generated with OpenAI. [1] The claim sits inside Saturday's Wall Street Journal feature, published in Livemint at 10:28 a.m. IST. [1] A person familiar with the matter said OpenAI has found no evidence A7 is currently using its models. [1] Current is not historical. A Saturday lab accusation is not a new model release.
This paper's Saturday feature already filed A7 as a $100 billion operating claim with a convicted founder. That piece is the rail. This one is the stamp. MSM buried the tooling inside a Kremlin fintech success story. The completed technology record is the OSC finding plus the OpenAI denial. It is not proof the models are still on.
On March 11, 2025, OSC says, a Kyrgyz front company paid a Chinese supplier about $1 million for drone parts. [1] The fake invoice listed auto-body polish, child car seats, and other car accessories. [1] The shells, OSC wrote in a June report, have plausible websites and local bank accounts. A7 staff in Moscow control them. [1] The forgeries exist to keep the banks calm. A stamp that looks like a stamp is the product.
OSC drew on files and chat logs hackers released last September, then checked the material against customs records and court filings. [1] A Shor-backed political group hit by the same hack has said some leaked conversations were fabricated. [1] A7 did not comment on the hack. [1] Representatives of A7 and Ilan Shor did not answer the Journal. [1] A contested leak is still the stack Saturday published. It is not a courtroom finding.
OpenAI's newsroom had no August 8 product post. The lab's public clock jumps from an August 7 cyber note to items dated August 10 and later. The Saturday story is not a launch. It is a use claim about a model family that already sits in every forger's toolbar. That is why the denial's adverb matters. "Currently" leaves March 2025 on the table. [1]
A7 says it handles nearly 20 percent of Russian foreign-trade payments, more than $100 billion a year. [1] Shor told TASS in July the Western system "enslaved the whole financial world" and that A7 is "immune to sanctions." [1] Immune is a marketing word. A network that needs other people's banks, and then needs generated stamps to keep those banks from noticing drone parts, is describing camouflage. Camouflage is the opposite of a completed alternative to Swift.
TRM Labs said in June that crypto in A7's operations functions as a channel for actors already excluded from ordinary banking. [1] Chainalysis counted more than $2.2 billion through one A7A5 swapping service and found the activity heavy on weekdays, thin on weekends — the clock of offices. [1] Those pipes are Saturday's other tooling. They are not this article's subject. The subject is a U.S. image model accused of minting the paperwork.
Lab accounts will file the stamps as proof the models already serve a sanctioned rail. The Journal files a clause. The completed Saturday record is an OSC June finding, a March 2025 invoice, a $1 million drone-parts payment dressed as car seats, and an anonymous familiar saying OpenAI sees no current use. That is a technology story. It is not a product announcement, and it is not a conviction.
-- KENJI NAKAMURA, Tokyo