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US Treasury blocks crypto addresses of three Chinese nationals

Thursday 22 August 2019 10:36 CET | News

The US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has sanctioned three Chinese nationals and their cryptocurrency addresses.

Xiaobing Yan, Fujing Zheng and Guanghua Zheng were accused of violating money laundering and drug smuggling laws. Under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act, OFAC named them narcotics traffickers.

As a result, any property they own within the US was frozen. The agency also listed a number of email aliases, citizen numbers, passport information for the three, as well as a number of Bitcoin addresses, plus a Litecoin account one, which belong to the Chinese citizens.

In addition to naming the three individuals, OFAC listed Qinsheng Pharmaceutical Technology and the Zheng Drug Trafficking Organization.

The action was coordinated by OFAC together with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and local law enforcement agencies. According to CoinDesk, this intervention marks the second time OFAC has sanctioned digital currency addresses specifically, having last done so in November 2018 when a pair of Iranian nationals were added to the Specially Designated Nationals list.


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Keywords: US Treasury, money laundering, drugs smuggling, Bitcoin, Litecoin, cryptocurrency addresses, fraud prevention, security
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