Cryptocurrencies: A vast network dismantled in Hong Kong

The authorities announced Thursday, July 15 the dismantling of a first money laundering network using cryptocurrencies.

Hong Kong customs announced Thursday, July 15 the dismantling for the first time in the former British colony of a network for money laundering using cryptocurrencies, which would have brought into the official circuit no less than 1.2 billion Hong Kong dollars (130 million euros) of dirty money. "This is the first time in Hong Kong that a network using cryptocurrencies to launder dirty money and cover up the origin of criminal assets has been broken down," senior official Mark Woo Wai-kwan told reporters. of the police. Four people, including the brain of the network, were arrested and 20 million HKD were frozen.

The network had opened several bank accounts opened in the name of shell companies to which they made transfers through a cryptocurrency exchange, in order to turn them into hard cash for their customers. About 60% of the total has passed through Singapore-based accounts over the past 15 months. The network used currencies from the Tether cryptocurrency.

Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and others are regularly criticized by regulators for their illegal uses because of the anonymity they allow as well as their ease of use. But the authorities are getting more and more results in tracking down these illegal operations.

London police announced on Tuesday that they had made the largest cryptocurrency seizure in the United Kingdom, worth more than 210 million euros, erasing the previous record set a few weeks earlier.