July 21, 2016
On 14 and 15 July Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) organised the 3rd Virtual Currencies Conference. The event was hosted at Europol headquarters in The Hague and brought together over 90 experts from various regions of the world. The aim of the conference was to further strengthen the fight against the abuse of virtual currencies for criminal transactions and money laundering. Experts from law enforcement and the private sector shared their insights into criminal trends and the latest techniques used by criminals and terrorists to hide their financial tracks and cash out criminal proceeds using Bitcoins and various other digital currencies.
The latest cutting-edge technology solutions for tracing blockchain transactions for criminal investigations were presented. Best practices and law enforcement techniques were also shared through concrete case examples. The event also offered opportunities for closer cooperation and new partnerships to prevent and fight cybercrime and money laundering as well as facilitate asset recovery. The conference also addressed the latest trends in compliance presented by FinCEN, and invited virtual currency exchangers demonstrated their best practices in implementing AML policies and mechanisms as well as risk-based approaches to suspicious transactions.