- Thailand authorities have been cracking down on the country’s drug networks.
- After numerous successful moves, the authorities plan to step up their game even further.
- The authorities are particularly targeting the use of banking and crypto systems in such crimes.
The use of digital currencies for illicit activities still remains rather common around the world. However, while most use this as an argument against the crypto industry, Thailand decided to change its tactics and do something to prevent it.
The country’s authorities have announced a crackdown on the use of crypto for drug networks’ laundering techniques. These techniques often achieve multi-million dollar turnovers, and while they are not always using digital coins, there are quite a few cases where cryptos are included.
The sophistication of the drug networks only became apparent recently, after one of the meth syndicates in Thailand was brought down. This led the authorities to conclude that the real amount of the drug networks is next to impossible to assume. The country’s police chief’s assistant said as much, himself.
Moves against crypto use in drug crimes
According to local reports, the authorities allegedly have a plan to confiscate nearly $2 billion in drugs. The move would come after an entire series of successful crackdowns.
However, the country is still not satisfied with this success, praiseworthy as it is. Instead, the authorities want to improve their methods further, and step up their efforts to stop drug-related operations.
A part of this would revolve around assets used in drug-related crimes, particularly those that were laundered — either through crypto accounts, or the banking systems themselves, as criminals keep finding ways to misuse any method available to them.
The profits that they manage to obtain are also suspected of being used for running an entire secondary economy. The money is then used for obtaining real estate in foreign countries, luxury commodities, as well as digital currencies. After all, crypto payments are more difficult to track, the coins’ volatility provides an excellent way to increase profits further, and they can be used for instant international payments from anywhere in the world.
