Around 2000 public and private sector experts joined forces this week at a virtual conference designed to promote information sharing in the cryptocurrency and anti-money laundering space.
Participants logged on to the 5th Global Conference on Criminal Finances and Cryptocurrencies, organized by the Basel Institute on Governance, Interpol and Europol.
They met to share expertise on current trends, strategies and tactics to tackle crimes involving virtual assets — such as money laundering, cryptocurrency fraud and cryptojacking. Day two was restricted to those from law enforcement and certain public sector representatives.
Europol argued that close co-operation between governments, law enforcement, regulators and the private sector is vital to tackle crypto-enabled crimes.
“This kind of knowledge-sharing between the public and private sectors, as well as between law enforcement representatives in different countries and institutions, is crucial in global efforts to protect the virtual assets industry from malicious actors,” it explained.
“It also helps to foster the multi-disciplinary approach that is essential to tackling virtual assets-based money laundering and related crimes, by bringing together expertise in technology, financial investigation and asset recovery.”
Specific recommendations crystallized from these conversations will emerge over the coming days.
However, they will likely fall into areas such as: international and public-private cooperation; virtual asset recovery; harmonized regulations; capacity building; investigative techniques and technologies; and the use of specialized police units.
Cryptocurrency remains a major target for financially motivated threat actors and a means to launder the proceeds of cybercrime.
The US Treasury has been placing sanctions on certain Russian cryptocurrency exchanges, to send a message that such activity will not go unpunished.
Money laundering is said to be worth trillions annually, with sporadic police action such as the 1800 arrests earlier this month doing little to stem the tide.