pharaoh
Bluelighter
- Joined
- May 8, 2017
- Messages
- 587
In the UK you have to register if you purchase cryptocurrency at the lower, consumer level anyway. I'm sure that there are ways around it but if you go to a coin-market, the law needs to confirm who you are and all that. This is obviously so that they can identify you in any cases involving big money, especially if it is suspicious. But just like with fiat currency/traditional banking, people who are moving major amounts of illegal money around aren't gonna set up a personal account with Natwest and they more often than not wont keep large chunks of their money in the country at all. They will keep some legit money and pay some tax but they will also use tax-havens. All you have to do is look at politicians to see how they do it with their "investment portfolios" and all that bullshit. I know of people who somehow have many bank accounts that can be linked in a way that doesn't make sense to me and I wont say what that means but they deal with large transactions in accounts that probably couldn't be linked to anyone, at least not in this country. If you followed the money, it would probably be in a bank in Dubai or whatever.
Anyway the point is that there will always be ways for people to move big amounts of money around, whether fiat or otherwise. Lots of kinds of laundering methods exist and it has to be the case with crypto because too many serious criminals accept it now and these aren't people who would assume that it was anonymous. At the very least they would pay people to operate wallets and move money around and take the fall if they ever got caught. Even still, I suspect that the majority of major trafficking wealth is laundered through more traditional means. Look at how the Kinahan mob used the "Hawala" method which goes back thousands of years. Instead of trying to explain it I'll copy and paste the definition:
'1. a traditional system of transferring money used in Arab countries and South Asia, whereby the money is paid to an agent who then instructs an associate in the relevant country or area to pay the final recipient.'
If you read further into Hawala you will see that it can be done around or outside of the traditional banking system making transfers hard to trace and using a trust-based system. Once some money arrives, it can be deposited just about anywhere in places where the banks don't give a shit about where the money came from. Definitely work looking into.
And as for more traditional laundering methods, one Kinahan guy was taken down after they discovered that his "high class vodka" company/brand was used for washing money. Also many sports: Scottish football for sure, boxing 100%. I still don't get the obsession with crypto - I suppose it is just another aspect of an "investment portfolio" for the real players.