Economic Daily: Prevent virtual assets from becoming a tool for money laundering

The Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate recently jointly issued an interpretation on several issues concerning the application of law in handling criminal cases of money laundering, which clearly listed "virtual asset" transactions as one of the ways of money laundering. Money laundering crimes are closely linked to upstream crimes such as drug crimes, financial crimes, and corruption crimes, which seriously undermine the financial management order. In recent years, my country has continuously improved the anti-money laundering legal system and increased its efforts to crack down on money laundering crimes. According to the data of the Supreme People's Court, in the past three years, courts across the country have concluded a total of 2,406 criminal cases of money laundering involving 2,978 people at the first instance, and the fight against money laundering has achieved phased results. At present, new technologies and new formats such as virtual assets are constantly updated and iterated, showing a state of superposition with traditional upstream crimes such as telecommunications network fraud, online gambling, and underground banks. In order to cover up and conceal money laundering, criminals continue to renovate their methods and hide money laundering activities in online transactions. Among them, virtual currency, game currency, "running point platform", live broadcast rewards, etc. have become new money laundering carriers and methods, with characteristics such as networking and chaining, and are highly concealed and confusing. Money laundering cannot wash away traces, let alone the facts of the crime. According to the latest judicial interpretation, the transfer and conversion of criminal proceeds and their benefits through "virtual asset" transactions and financial asset exchanges can be identified as "covering up and concealing the source and nature of criminal proceeds and their benefits by other means" as stipulated in the Criminal Law. This means that the court will severely punish money laundering crimes in accordance with the law and increase the crackdown on money laundering crimes using virtual currency, game currency, etc. After the legal network is tight, it must be strictly enforced. To punish money laundering crimes in accordance with the law, all parties need to strengthen cooperation and coordination to form a joint force to combat. Public security, procuratorial, judicial and financial regulatory departments should strengthen coordination and cooperation, and continuously improve the law enforcement and judicial cooperation mechanism. The general public should be vigilant, recognize the nature of new money laundering crimes, and not fall into the money laundering trap for petty gains. (Beijing Daily)