According to Bloomberg, the European Union is considering appointing a new financial inspector to monitor the crypto industry’s anti-money laundering efforts and associated concerns. The European Commission is spearheading the plan, which is set to launch in 2024.
“It is key that the scope of the new EU authority explicitly includes crypto-assets, given that this is one of the fields more prone to money laundering activities,” said Luis Garicano, a leading EU lawmaker in favor of the proposed move.
A group of EU member states, led by Germany, is now pushing for cryptocurrencies to be expressly included in the approach. Furthermore, the proposed scope of the watchdog is said to include cross-border organizations like crypto asset service providers.
The EU, crypto, and money laundering
The proposed EU step follows a slew of crypto-related criminal charges, including money laundering, in Europe.
An investigation by Reuters earlier this year revealed that German law authorities and lawyers were in contact with cryptocurrency exchange Binance over at least €2 million in transactions involving potentially stolen assets. Binance apparently responded that it was unable to assist.
Binance was recently approached for assistance by German police in relation to two persons suspected of supporting an Islamist shooter who killed four people in Vienna, Austria. One of these men was discovered to have conducted “unspecified” transactions on Binance, according to law enforcement.
Monero and Dash, two privacy-focused cryptocurrencies, were involved in a missing person case in Norway last year. As part of their investigation, Norwegian law enforcement confronted the issue of tracing transactions made utilizing the anonymity-preserving cryptocurrency. Hydra, at the time one of the leading crypto markets in Eastern Europe, was discovered to be a darknet market in a study conducted by blockchain analytics firm, Chainalysis in 2020.
More recently, British police refunded more than $5 million to victims of a multinational crypto fraud that included not only various European countries, but also the United States, Australia, and China.