The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) is warning that organized crime syndicates are increasingly leveraging cryptocurrency and blockchain technology to fuel their operations.
According to a new UNODC report, gangs in Southeast Asia are creating tailored financial ecosystems, including unlicensed exchanges and stablecoins, to evade detection and launder illicit money.
“…Many of the region’s largest criminal groups that have expanded within Southeast Asia and a growing number of jurisdictions in other parts of the world have rapidly diversified their business lines towards the development of key infrastructure.
This has extended far beyond the construction and management of physical scam centers to include online gambling platforms and software services, unlicensed payment processors and cryptocurrency exchanges, encrypted communications platforms and, most recently, stablecoins, four blockchain networks, and illicit online marketplaces, often controlled by the same criminal networks.“
The UN also calls for international cooperation and stronger regulatory frameworks to combat and stem the growth of such groups.
“The subtle and ongoing spillover creeping into other regions has allowed Asian crime syndicates to broaden the scope of their operations and target an increasingly diverse range of victim profiles and nationalities from around the world.
More than this, it has allowed them to dramatically scale up profits and influence while simultaneously generating billions in illicit capital reserves (fiat and cryptocurrency) that can be reinvested into further expansion and also utilized to service the money laundering needs of other criminal groups globally.”
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