The UK National Economic Crime Centre reports a rise in cryptocurrency use for money laundering, emphasizing a new focus on enhancing oversight.
Key Insights
- The National Economic Crime Centre (NECC) highlights a surge in the use of cryptocurrencies by criminals for money laundering.
- Cryptoassets are now ranked as the third priority in the UK’s economic crime strategy, alongside the Financial Conduct Authority and the Treasury.
- A Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) report warns against banning privacy tools in cryptocurrency, suggesting it may worsen illicit activities.
The National Economic Crime Centre (NECC), part of the UK’s National Crime Agency, has identified a significant trend where criminals are increasingly using innovative cryptocurrency products to launder money. This observation is included in the agency's recently published annual report.
The NECC's threat assessment details how laundering networks are expanding their operations across borders, employing both new and established methods to navigate legal and illegal financial systems. Notably, many organized crime groups are now outsourcing their money laundering operations to specialized networks for a fee.
The NECC also draws a comparison between the roles of artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies, highlighting how synthetic identities and automated systems are being used to exploit banking frameworks.
Strengthening Cryptocurrency Regulation
In its latest findings, the NECC has categorized cryptoassets as the third most pressing area among nine economic crime priorities established in conjunction with the Financial Conduct Authority, the Home Office, and the Treasury as of July 2025. This new focus aims to direct regulated firms on where to enhance their compliance efforts, placing cryptocurrencies above traditional cash and other money laundering schemes.
The agency is working on developing a more proactive, intelligence-driven approach to cryptocurrency oversight, indicating a transition from simply managing referrals to actively pursuing targets, although specific details of this strategy are yet to be revealed.
In a recent operation, dubbed Operation Atlantic, which involved collaboration with the U.S. Secret Service and major cryptocurrency exchanges like Coinbase and Binance, the NECC uncovered 20,000 victims of phishing scams and froze assets worth $12 million in March.
Operation Destabilise, aimed at Russian-speaking networks converting cash into cryptocurrencies, has led to 129 arrests and over £25 million seized in the UK, surpassing the number of arrests reported in a previous update last November. The NECC plans to expand this operation to target additional high-risk money laundering networks that threaten the UK’s financial system.
The report also features insights from a study on Privacy-Enhancing Technologies in the crypto sector, conducted by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). The study, stemming from a roundtable discussion hosted by the NECC in July 2025, warns against banning privacy tools, arguing that such actions could push illicit activities to unregulated platforms, complicating law enforcement efforts. RUSI associate fellow Allison Owen noted that enhancing trust through compliance features could facilitate wider acceptance of these technologies.
