US prosecutors are going after crypto sanctions evasion

The US Department of Justice is prosecuting the operator of a payment platform that flouted economic sanctions using cryptocurrency. As reported by The Washington Post, it’s possibly the first criminal prosecution of crypto-related sanctions evasion — underscoring both the technology’s potential for getting around financial blocks and its traceability by law enforcement.

District of Columbia Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui revealed the prosecution’s existence in an opinion on a still-sealed case, omitting the name of the payment platform as well as the “comprehensively sanctioned country” it dealt with. (There are five such countries: Iran, North Korea, Syria, Cuba, and Ukraine’s Crimea region.) The operator apparently used an exchange to...

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