Russian criminals aid UK drug gangs in laundering lockdown funds

The National Crime Agency has uncovered a record multi-billion-dollar money laundering scheme involving UK gangs trying to offload cash during lockdown, News.az reports citing BBC.

Discovering the Russian-speaking network embedded in the UK’s street drugs market is the biggest success against money laundering in a decade, say investigators.

The global operation, based in Moscow, has been taking dirty money from crime gangs for a fee, and allowing them to exchange it for untraceable crypto currency, protecting drugs profits from detection. The network has also been used by the Russian state to fund espionage.

Investigators from the National Crime Agency (NCA) and its partners say the network stretches across 30 countries and that 84 people have so far been arrested, including 71 in the UK.

On Wednesday, the US Treasury sanctioned the key figures at the top of the network.

Rob Jones, director general of operations at the National Crime Agency (NCA), said the thread connecting Russian elites, crypto-rich cyber criminals and UK drugs gangs had been “invisible until now”.

“We have identified and acted against the Russians pulling the strings at the very top,” he continued, adding that the NCA had now made it “extremely difficult” for the key players to operate.

News.Az