UK Adds New Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Regulations

The latest UK crypto regulation news show that United Kingdom’s finance and economics department has recently announced the addition of new Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regulations.

As per the official announcement, the new AML regulation in UK was launched in a bid to combat the increasing risks that are linked to the crypto transactions and networks. As the UK Finance and Economics Department said, the UK adds these measures in order to reduce the risk of laundering and other crimes related to crypto.

The Director of Retail and Regulatory Investigations, Therese Chambers, had a speech on March 6 and said that the new Money Laundering Regulations (MLR) position the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) as the new Anti-Money Laundering overseer for a couple of crypto objectives.

As she explained, the new regulations that UK adds go beyond the 5th Anti-Money Laundering Directive (5AMLD) and include a new broader set of activities, including ICOs as it was recommended by the FATF in 2019. In that manner, the 5AMLD was entered as law by the European Union in July 2018 and came into effect officially on January 10, 2020.

Chambers told the media that cryptocurrencies and crypto-related businesses are now associated with money laundering because they allow anonymous financial transfers. She also explained that the FCA’s regulatory oversight mainly focuses on the business dealings within the cryptocurrency space.

The UK adds these new changes in order to help exchanges dealing with crypto pairings. Custodial wallet providers, ICOs, IEOs and crypto ATMs are also part of the list. Chambers was also featured in the crypto news and cryptocurrency regulation news, noting that any crypto operating firm must possess FCA risk assessment, customer due diligence, transaction monitoring, record-keeping and suspicious activity reporting.

What’s also interesting is the fact that crypto firms have been leaving the UK and EU because of their continuous stringent regulations on crypto firms. The EU enacted new AML regulations in July 2018, called the 5th Anti-Money Laundering Directive (5AMLD) which has rules that led several crypto exchanges to leave UK and EU-related countries.

Most recently, we had Simplecoin and Chopcoin, both crypto platforms which closed their operations due to the EU’s AML regulations. As Simplecoin then said, the latest AML and KYC regulations were the main reason why crypto businesses are leaving.