Tracfin, the financial intelligence service of the Ministry of the Economy, highlights the increased role of crypto-assets in financial delinquency, in the last part of its 2022 report published on Tuesday.
Crypto-assets are virtual assets on electronic media, allowing payments without recourse to currency.
This third volume, entitled State of the Threat, presents in the form of an ABC 29 cases of financial crimes observed in 2022, from the most classic (abuse of corporate assets, influence peddling, etc.), to the most innovative: fraudulent use of non-fungible tokens (NFT), laundering of funds resulting from a ransomware attack via crypto-assets, crypto-assets used to order, observe and pay for sexual attacks on minors abroad…
The use of crypto-assets also constitutes a new vector for financing jihadist terrorism, Tracfin also observes, and it is the response of its actors to the dismantling of traditional networks and the measures put in place by the financial professions, such as compulsory production. identification documents as part of entering into a business relationship.
Case number 28 thus details the circuit of financing terrorism via crypto-assets in the Turkish-Syrian zone.
The organization notes that crypto-assets allow for easy and rapid transfer of funds, and that NFTs in particular present a high level of pseudonymization, and a low rate of regulation.
In a press release published on the occasion of the release of this final part of the Tracfin report for 2022, the Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire and the Minister of Public Accounts Thomas Cazenave welcome the action of the organization, which reported the Last year, more than 2.1 billion euros were at stake, including nearly 1.5 billion in tax, social security or customs fraud.
They also note the growing use of crypto-assets among the trends observed, and specify that the cell’s resources will be consolidated in the years to come.
In 2022, Tracfin received 162,708 suspicion reports, an increase of 46% since 2020. The organization, for its part, transmitted 3,085 information notes, to the justice system and to the intelligence services in particular.