Rejected 1: Ukraine To Seize Illegally Obtained Funds In Crypto Wallets
The Ministry of Finance, Ukraine has made its intentions to block all crypto wallets in order to seize assets that were obtained in an illegal way, Cointelegraph reports on January 24th.
The Ukrainian Minister of Finance, Oksana Markarova disclosed this in the report published in the official website of the Ministry of Financial, emphasizing that the State Financial Monitoring Service of Ukraine (SFMS) will be charged the responsibility of tracing sources and origin of the fund in the different wallets.
The aim of Ukrainian SFMS is not only to trace the origin and seize the illegally obtained funds in the wallet, but also trace how those funds were spent.
Oksana Markarova, Ukrainian Minister of Finance says “It is impossible to stop operations now, but it is possible to block crypto wallets and remove illegally obtained crypto assets. This can be done by gaining access to the crypto's private keys as a result of complex investigations.”
On December 9th, the Ukrainian government included the crypto-related law in its Anti Money Laundry, which classified crypto as a virtual asset that will be under the guidelines of Financial Action Task Force (FATF). The document stipulates the consistent monitoring of operations like cryptocurrency transaction by a relevant authority. The new law which SFMS will be part of stipulates that crypto investors or traders need to complete the Know Your Customer (KYC) verification before transacting a crypto up to 30,000 Ukrainian hryvnia ($1,300).
SCFM disclosed that an “analytical product” is accessible to them that enable them to investigate or look into the source of the crypto fund and how it was spent. Blocking the Ukrainian crypto wallets might not be an easy an operation, because is applied using Ukrainian IP-addresses and identities. Cointelegraph has asked SCFM on their capability of actualizing such task but no response from yet.