The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control has enlisted three Chinese nationals and their cryptocurrency addresses, alleging they violated money laundering and drug smuggling laws.
The United States Treasury Department has constituted different cryptocurrency addresses associated to its Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list as per the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act, which also commonly addressed as the Kingpin Act. These addresses and the individuals that link them have been claimed to be associated with foreign narcotics superintendent.
On August 21, the Treasury revamped its SDN list. The three accused narcotic operators linked with these addresses.
Naming Xiaobing Yan, Fujing Zheng, and Guanghua Zheng. All of the three are of Chinese origin and are deemed to be associated with addresses that are present on the SDN list. Guanghua Zheng has one another address for Litecoin.
Sigal Mandelker, Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, stated that Zheng and Yan have delivered hundreds of packets of synthetic opioids to the U.S., aiming to sell to customers through online advertising and another medium of sales, and via commercial mail, and other carriers to smuggle their drugs into the United States. They will be enlisted in a list that is sent to the President. He then decides whether it is apt to impose suggested U.S. measures.
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OFAC’s actions look consistent, it’s for the second time the department has added cryptocurrency addresses to its sanctions list. In November 2018, the department blacklisted other 2 bitcoin addresses linked with an Iranian ransomware plan.
Chainalysis global head of policy Jesse Spiro told The Block,
We expect further action by OFAC to involve additional cryptocurrency addresses are linked to these individuals and others that are allegedly associated with narcotics trafficking going forward.
A news release from the white house in 2015 establishes the Kingpin Act as an implementation to cease trading between narcotics traffickers and U.S entities. The act states that the government distributes work to monitor foreign narcotics smugglers.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin also trusts that Bitcoin will open gates to far greater monetary crimes. Mnuchin will closely observe the behaviors of Bitcoin, he stated in an interview. He believes that loads of dollars in the cryptocurrency have been and will be used for illegal tradings.
Mnuchin has also claimed Bitcoin is used for money laundering and this laundering invites more people due to its better management and evasion of record than dollars.
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According to Mnuchin, the government endeavors to fight the “bad actors in the U.S. dollar each day to save the integrity of the U.S. financial framework.
