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Economic Crime Law Blog

Freeze to Seize: Lessons from World War II

As is well known, one of the advantages of being on holiday is having the time to read the US State Department official historian’s 259-page report on US and allied attempts to confiscate German property after World War II, published in 1997. The reason for doing so, quite apart from the topic being intrinsically fascinating,…

Australian Sanctions Extravaganza

Having spent a week in Tasmania, I am now back to work, and what better way to emerge from holiday-induced wooziness than by delving into a couple of sanctions-related developments right here, Down Under! (Before I do that, though, can I digress for a moment’s appreciation of an airline. Not only do Link Airways fly…

Was OFAC Right to Sanction Tornado Cash?

In August 2022 the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed financial sanctions on the cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash, in a move that caused widespread consternation. This is potentially the first time that a truly decentralised cryptocurrency service provider — mixer or exchange — has become subject to sanctions. A month later, a…

Equatorial Guinea v France: The Gift that Keeps on Giving

This has been quite the delay, but I am back to blogging (I can almost hear the roar of jubilant crowds…). Given the state of the world, there is economic crime news aplenty, and so I will be posting regularly over the next several weeks. Perhaps the most bizarre development of the past month or…

The EU Proposal on Sanctions and Confiscation: Good, But Not Fit-for-Purpose?

Yesterday the European Commission unveiled two proposed instruments that deal with the freezing and seizure of assets. One of these is a Council Decision that would designate sanctions evasion as a serious crime within the EU’s competence, with a view to then setting the definition of the offence and applicable penalties. The other is a…

How Does One Regulate Cryptocurrency Mixing?

A couple of weeks ago the Financial Times reported that the UK’s National Crime Agency had called for extending anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CTF) rules to cryptocurrency mixers. The Financial Times writes: ‘Around 15 per cent of all proceeds of crime was routed through mixers in 2021, according to Elliptic, a group that analyses…

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