Cryptocurrencies are tools to hide the trail of funds. Criminals would be withdrawing funds with cryptocurrencies to other nations like Nigeria.
Central American migrants who get to pass through Mexico, seeking to cross the northern border into the United States of America, would be suffering extortions in exchange for cryptocurrencies, according to Santiago Nieto Castillo, leading head of the Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF).
Nieto Castillo recently made these statements during a meeting with members of the National Migration Institute, as stated by the Mexican government in a statement that appeared on August 27.
The spokesperson of the FIU revealed that they have identified various cases in which cryptocurrencies have been some kind of tool to pay extortion and ransom for kidnappings. Criminals have appealed to this medium as a way to avoid the current laws and be able to enter their profits into the financial system or to take their profits abroad.
The authorities don’t know how the criminals operate and how many cases the use of cryptocurrencies has been identified, but the officials alleged more than 2,000 reports involving more than 1,500 people.
Nieto Castillo explained an example of an operation of more than 150 million dollars, although he did not clarify whether it represented those involving cryptocurrencies or referred to more general cases that get closer to human trafficking or kidnappings.
Additionally, the representative of the FIU clarified that they are still trying to identify the criminal groups related to these reports. In this regard, he pointed out that the agency is working on the complete identification of criminal groups and the financial routes followed in the northern triangle of Central America and Mexico.
The FIU and its Position On Cryptocurrencies
Among Mexican organizations, the FIU gives particular attention to cryptocurrencies, the exchanges involving all these currencies, and operations with them in general.
In September of last year, the government entity had received up to 2,400 reports of suspicious activities from various bitcoin and cryptocurrency exchanges that operate in that nation.
Of those 2,400 reported cases, only two corresponded to illicit activities that the FIU got to detect. The director of this entity, Santiago Nieto Castillo, indicated in a series of statements to the press that one of them got related to human trafficking and another a group of hackers who wanted to hit the financial system.
In both cases, the criminals used cryptocurrencies as a tool to carry out their illicit activities. In addition, this year, Nieto Castillo himself spoke about a considerable number of exchange sites that operate illegally in Mexico. Nieto Castillo also mentioned there were at least 12 platforms of this nature, and they were fully present in the Mexican market without any registration.
By: Jenson Nuñez
