Law enforcement agencies are working hard to identify various crimes. For example, the Financial Intelligence Unit of Estonian police discovered that companies from abroad owned by e-residents of Estonia took part in multiple large-scale exit scams. It is worth noting that, Estonia is a crypto-friendly country. However, such cases have the potential to create bad publicity for the crypto industry.
Unfortunately, foreigners linked to Estonia’s e-residency program are being linked to
cryptocurrency frauds. The country’s government launched the e-residency program in 2014. Importantly, this program offers Estonian citizenship to every person irrespective of where this person lives.
Let’s get back to crypto-related crimes. Regulators suspect that Estonian firms and e-residents committed other crimes as well. According to the police, Estonian firms and e-residents,organized initial coin offering scams.
Crypto-related crimes and law enforcement agencies
There are numerous crypto-related crimes all over the world. For instance, Estonia was in the epicenter of a $220 billion money-laundering scandal.
Regulators immediately canceled the licenses of more than 500 crypto companies.
Currently, there are only 353 companies that have a crypto license in the country. As a reminder, the number of licensed companies declined from 1.234 to 353 companies in less than a year.
Authorities are willing to take measures to deal with crypto-related crimes.It is worth noting that, there are close to 70,000 Estonian e-residents. The e-residency team is working with the police as well as the Financial Intelligence Unit to investigate the case.
People should take into account that, the e-residency team is willing to improve the reputation of this program.
As mentioned above, there are is no lack of crypto-related crimes. However, there is no need to ban cryptocurrencies. Authorities in Estonia should work with companies and individuals to come up with the best solution. Furthermore, it is desirable for them to join forces with other countries to investigate crypto-related crimes.
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