Beijing Official Sentenced to 11 Years in Prison for Involvement in Bitcoin Money Laundering Operation: Report

A former deputy director of the Beijing Financial Bureau is reportedly facing a lengthy jail time for his involvement in crimes related to crypto. 

According to Caixin, Hao Gang was engaged in a Bitcoin (BTC) money laundering operation.

He also assisted an executive of a leading crypto mining company by lifting border controls in exchange for receiving bribes to the tune of tens of millions of yuan. 

The report says that an intermediate people’s court in Beijing sentenced Hao Gang to 11 years in prison and a fine of 1.3 million yuan ($178,380) on Thursday, nearly two years after he was investigated for bribery and money laundering.

The court also ordered that the proceeds of the crimes be confiscated and handed over to the state treasury.

Last year, a Chinese state-owned newspaper issued a warning, saying that corrupt government officials could be funneling crypto into cold storage to avoid investigations.

Mo Hongxian, a professor at Wuhan University Law School, tells the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-controlled Legal Daily that governance and regulation need to adapt to the modern types of corruption that crypto enables.

“For example, there are two problems with the use of virtual currencies such as Bitcoin to commit corruption. First, it is difficult to crack down on supervision, especially distributed peer-to-peer virtual currencies such as encrypted digital currencies, which exist without the ‘medium’ of institutions such as banks and use keys. The way of conducting transactions and the characteristics of anonymity provide natural convenience for illegal and criminal activities.

Second, it is difficult to identify and process. For example, virtual currencies such as Bitcoin are not recognized by our country, but in reality they serve as equivalent functions. How to identify and process handling is also an issue that requires attention in judicial practice.”

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