The UK Police seized approximately £114m worth of cryptocurrencies on 25 June as part of a money laundering investigation. The Metropolitan Police have confirmed that this seizure is the largest of its kind in UK history, and one of the largest in the world.
Cryptocurrency| Rosenblatt’s Financial Crime Team
The Metropolitan Police have not stated which cryptocurrencies they seized or how exactly they traced the money, but they did reveal that the operation was carried out by their Economic Crime Command team in connection with money laundering offences.
Graham McNulty, Deputy Assistant Commissioner said that “every single part of the Met is working to reduce violence on the streets of London as an absolute priority, this includes our financial investigators.” He further added that there “is an inherent link between money and violence” and highlighted that “cash remains king, but as technology and online platforms develop, some are moving to more sophisticated methods of laundering their profits.”
Police seizures of cryptocurrencies have been growing in recent years. Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin provide more anonymity to senders and recipients of money, although the transactions form part of a large ledger, the wallet addresses of those involved in the transactions do not contain identifiable details. For this reason, cryptocurrency has proved popular with criminals to buy drugs and guns as it can be traded anonymously and is unregulated.
This seizure comes after the US authorities announced last year that it had seized around $1bn (£718m) worth of Bitcoin connected to the darknet market place the Silk Road which was shut down in 2013. Although this figure is dwarfed by the nearly $3.6bn in Bitcoin that is still missing following the disappearance of two brothers, Ameer and Raees Cajee who founded the cryptocurrency exchange Africyrpt in South Africa.
Rosenblatt can help
Rosenblatt has a wealth of experience in financial crime and is uniquely placed to support clients that are the subject of investigations by the Police having being involved in some of the most high profile investigations into multi-million-pound, cross jurisdictional fraud cases in the UK.
https://www.rosenblatt-law.co.uk/team/frances-murray/
https://www.rosenblatt-law.co.uk/services/financial-crime/#financial-crime
https://www.rosenblatt-law.co.uk/services/serious-and-general-crime/
Contact us
Should you wish to discuss the services we offer further please contact Frances Murray from the Financial Crime team at frances.murray@rosenblatt-law.co.uk or +44 (0)20 7955 0880.
Authors
Frances Murray, Senior Associate (frances.murray@rosenblatt-law.co.uk)
Emily Russell, Trainee Solicitor (emily.russell@rosenblatt-law.co.uk)
