UK crime agency elevates crypto to third economic-crime priority, seizes £25M

Cryptoassets are third on the list of nine economic-crime priorities for the UK’s National Economic Crime Centre.

The annual report of the National Crime Agency unit, published this week, also signals that it wants to hunt its own laundering targets.

NECC wants to build its own intelligence-led capability

The NECC, the UK’s economic crime response coordination body, agreed on nine priorities with the Financial Conduct Authority, Home Office, and Treasury.

Number three is crypto assets. Only professional enablers, corrupt lawyers and accountants, and politically exposed persons rank higher than crypto assets.

Cash and money mules used for criminal activity rank below crypto on the list. This list is intended to guide the compliance work of regulated firms.

The NECC said in its threat assessment that criminals are making “innovative use of crypto asset products to evade detection and move illicit value at scale.” The same passage describes laundering networks that cross borders and that combine old and new techniques.

Many organized crime groups now pay dedicated networks to launder proceeds rather than doing it themselves. The report highlights synthetic identities and automated attacks on banks and cites artificial intelligence alongside crypto as an emerging tool.

The agency said it is developing “a more proactive and intelligence-led crypto capability.”

Police forces globally use blockchain analytics firms such as Chainalysis, Elliptic, and TRM Labs to retrace illicit flows. The NCA’s stated strategy is to develop that detective work in-house, with sanctions evasion and ransomware payments identified as areas of focus, along with traditional money laundering.

The agency calculates that more than £100 billion is laundered through the UK each year, but it does not separate out how much moves through crypto.

129 arrests mark Destabilise since 2022

The report also updated the figures for Operation Destabilise, the ongoing investigation into Russian-speaking networks converting street cash into cryptocurrency.

The investigation has resulted in the arrest of 129 people and the capture of more than £25 million in cash and cryptoassets across the UK since 2022.

That’s one more arrest than the update the agency gave in November. The NECC said it plans to grow the operation.

Alongside Destabilise, the report spotlighted Operation Atlantic, a week-long sprint from NCA HQ. In March, investigators identified 20,000 approval-phishing victims and froze $12 million, working with the US Secret Service and exchanges Coinbase, Binance, Kraken, and stablecoin issuer Tether.

The same effort took down more than 120 scam domains, and one UK victim lost more than £52,000 (about $66,000) to the scam, Cryptopolitan reported.

On policy, the NECC resisted the urge to ban privacy technology. A paper from the Royal United Services Institute, published following a roundtable convened by the NECC, opposes a blanket ban on crypto privacy tools.