Last month, an ex-takeaway worker was convicted in laundering the proceeds thanks to which she had gone from living above a Chinese restaurant to a multi-million pound house in an affluent neighbourhood in North London. After a two-month trial, Jian Wen was found guilty at Southwark Crown Court of an offence relating to money laundering. […]
Earlier this month, and after a six-week trial, the High Court ruled that Australian computer scientist Dr Crag Wright did not create bitcoin and neither did he author the Bitcoin White Paper. Even for an industry long accustomed to controversy and to hitting the headlines, the verdict can be seen as a watershed moment. Wright […]
Several spectacular recent debacles have left the crypto world reeling, including the collapse of the FTX exchange over a year ago or the current unfolding of Binance, not to mention the legal actions against the founder of the first and the co-founder of the second. In this article for The Times, Keith Oliver and Amalia […]
Between 2022 to 2023, civil forfeiture and recovery powers under Part 5 of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (POCA) contributed £160.1 million to the public purse. With criminal confiscation powers bringing in £179 million, the amount recouped using civil rather than criminal asset recovery powers equates to just under half of the total asset […]
I’ll start with something for the meme lovers. Does anyone remember Brenda from Bristol, who in response to a BBC interviewer’s question, asking her what she thought about Theresa May’s decision to call an early general election in 2017 only two years after the previous one in 2015, cried “You’re joking – not another one!”. […]
No, not the one where the airlines limit your bags to 23kg per person which, if you’re me, means that you must learn the word for “heavy” in multiple languages when checking in your bag (most recently, “pesada”, if you’re asking). I’m talking about the implementation of the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) Travel Rule […]
Last month, the High Court concluded that to enforce an arbitral award obtained by a major crypto exchange would be contrary to public policy under section 103(3) of the Arbitration Act 1996. This unusual invocation of the public policy exception arises as part of a recent line of cases in which crypto traders have generally […]
For once, I will be fleetingly positive about this country. I know it’s not de rigueur, and I won’t make a habit out of it. But it seems like we are starting to get the long-awaited clarity the country needs in the context of digital assets. Theoretically at least. I say this following the publication […]
According to recent research by financial claims management company Refundee, scams involving cryptocurrency are on the rise. Charlotte Tregunna spoke to City A.M. about the rise in crypto fraud, commenting that this was “inevitable”, since scams are prevalent in traditional finance. The types of scams invented by scammers are also increasingly imaginative, with new and […]
Last month, HM Treasury released a report on cryptoassets, in which it proposed a new, comprehensive regulatory regime. In this article for Business Reporter, Neil Swift, James Tyler and Michal Chajdukowski review the government’s plans to regulate the crypto sector. They discuss the timings of, and background to, the proposals, what key protections the new […]
