A new report from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) claims that bitcoin is being used to facilitate trade-based money laundering (TBML) schemes.
The DEA wrote:
The claim aside, the report doesn't contain any specific figures on how much money is being laundered through this means. But it does detail efforts to obtain bitcoin holdings through regulated exchanges, stating that China-based groups prefer using the cryptocurrency in an effort to bypass capital controls.
Elsewhere in that section, the paper's authors argue that over-the-counter (OTC) bitcoin brokers are helping to facilitate these cross-border transactions – a trend they write will continue.
"The increasing use of OTC bitcoin brokers, who are capable of transferring millions of dollars in bitcoin across international borders, as part of a capital flight scheme is expected to continue to intertwine criminal money laundering networks with capital flight," the report states.
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