Crypto money laundering has recently become a growing concern. The International Revenue Service on February 18 said two men have been apprehended on 17 February in separate investigations led by the National Office for Serious Fraud, Environmental Crime and Asset Confiscation to unmask cryptocurrency money laundering. One of the arrested, a 45-year-old man was accused of laundering over 2.1 million euros using crypto-enabled credit card which could not be explained by the Netherland Tax authorities based on his income and assets. All his properties including 3kg of gold, 260,000 euros of cryptocurrency, a car, and luxury items were seized. The second suspect was accused of laundering 100,000 euros in cryptocurrency. He allegedly used a crypto mixing service but authorities were able to unravel the IP address linked with his bitcoin address.
The development has once again brought to limelight, the claims of Financial Regulators that cryptocurrency is highly susceptible to money laundering. The government of Russia recently issued a set of rules that associate any cryptocurrency-linked transaction with high risk of money laundering. The Swiss regulators have also issued a new rule that set the threshold for unidentified crypto exchange transactions from 1,000 francs to 1,000 francs, all in effort to reduce the risk of crypto-money laundering.
