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BTC 
ETH The UK's National Economic Crime Center lists cryptocurrency assets as one of the nine economic crime priorities
The annual report of the National Economic Crime Center (NECC), a subsidiary of the UK's National Crime Agency (NCA), released this week pointed out that cryptocurrency assets have been listed as the third of the nine economic crime priorities that the agency is concerned about. The report also sends a signal that NECC hopes to establish its own intelligence-led investigative capabilities to directly target money laundering targets.
Intelligence-led: Building autonomous investigative capabilities
As the UK's coordinating agency for responding to economic crime, the NECC has jointly identified nine priorities with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the Home Office and the Ministry of Finance. Among them, only professional facilitators, corrupt lawyers and accountants, and politically sensitive persons (PEPs) are given higher priority than cryptocurrency assets; while cash and "head accounts" used for criminal activities are ranked second to cryptocurrencies. This list is designed to guide regulated companies in their compliance efforts.
NECC said in its threat assessment that criminals are "innovatively using cryptocurrency products to evade detection and transfer illegal funds on a large scale." The report also describes money-laundering networks that span national borders, combining traditional methods with new technologies. Many organized criminal groups no longer handle the stolen money themselves, but instead pay for specialized networks to launder it. The report highlights synthetic identities and automated attacks on banks, and juxtaposes artificial intelligence with cryptocurrencies as emerging tools.
To this end, the agency said it is developing "more proactive and intelligence-driven cryptocurrency investigation capabilities." While police departments around the world commonly use blockchain analytics companies such as Chainalysis, Elliptic and TRM Labs to track the flow of illicit funds, NCA's strategy is to cultivate such detective capabilities internally, focusing on sanctions evasion, ransomware payments and traditional money laundering.
According to estimates by the agency, the amount of money laundering through the UK exceeds £ 100 billion each year, but it did not separately disclose the specific amount involved in cryptocurrencies.
Operation Destability Progress: 129 arrests since 2022
The report also updates the latest data from Operation Destability, an ongoing investigation into Russian-language networks 'conversion of street cash into cryptocurrency. Since 2022, the investigation has resulted in the arrest of 129 people and the seizure of more than £ 25 million in cash and cryptocurrency assets in the UK. This number of arrests is one more than the agency's previous update in November. NECC said it plans to further expand the scale of the operation.
In addition to "Operation Destability", the report also focuses on "Operation Atlantic". It was a week-long raid launched by NCA headquarters. In March this year, investigators identified 20,000 victims of phishing approval scams and worked with the U.S. Secret Service and exchanges Coinbase, Binance, Kraken and stablecoin issuer Tether to freeze $12 million. The operation also closed more than 120 fraudulent domain names. According to reports, a British victim lost more than 52,000 pounds (approximately US$66,000) in the scam.
Policy stance: Oppose a total ban on privacy technologies
At the policy level, NECC has resisted the urge to ban privacy technologies. In a paper released by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), the agency opposed a blanket ban on cryptocurrency privacy tools. The paper was published after the NECC convened a roundtable and advocated a more prudent rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.
