Speaking on Australian television, Neil Walsh, head of the UN Department of Combating Cybercrime and Money Laundering, said that the anonymity of cryptocurrencies made it very difficult to combat illegal activities.
Walsh pointed out that this feature of cryptocurrencies is in the hands of criminals involved in the financing of terrorism, the sexual exploitation of children, money laundering and other illegal activities.
“Cryptocurrencies make it difficult to investigate important cases, although in the past, tracking such actions was easier [this was done by checking bank transfers],” Walsh said.
Walsh said his department would accept any help from crypto experts and the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (FATF) to deal with this “global epidemic.”
In addition, he noted that cryptocurrency exchanges could help in the fight against such anonymity if they strictly adhered to KYC procedures, thereby facilitating the work of tracking transactions.
Not long ago, independent UN experts established North Korea’s involvement in several cyber attacks with the goal of stealing about $ 2 billion from cryptocurrency exchanges and banks. Their report also says that the anonymous nature of cryptocurrencies allows attacks on cryptocurrency exchanges to be carried out with impunity.
According to Walsh, the Australian government is actively providing material support to the UN Department of Combating Cyber crime and Money Laundering, while funds are being used to equip the world’s security forces to combat cyber crime.
