The Finnish Customs Authority, Tulli, will sell around 2.000 BTC seized in different proceedings to benefit from its revaluation and the recent bullish rally that led the cryptocurrency to touch $42.000 USD per unit.
In finland, Customs, the country's Customs Authority has been studying for some months the possibility of selling the Bitcoin (BTC) which maintains confiscated products of various procedures applied to different organizations related mainly to drug and narcotic trafficking and distribution. According to the local media, the Finnish customs maintains 1.981 BTC confiscated since approximately 4 years ago, of which it will sell approximately 1.889 BTC. The interest of this authority in selling these assets is currently due to the great revaluation that Bitcoin has gained in recent years.
At the time of the seizure, the price of Bitcoin was between $600 USD and $1.100 USD per unit, so an estimated price of its holdings at that time was about $700.000 USD to $1.680.000 USD; while at present its price is around $74.000.000 USD; a growth of more than 4.500% in the last 4 years.
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A sale scheduled for the coming months
According to Pekka Pylkkänen, financial director of the Finnish customs service, the authority will sell its cryptocurrencies, confiscated by itself or through a exchange or cryptocurrency exchange, while noting that this sale should be carried out as soon as possible. The official stressed that customs is investigating how the sale can be organized to be carried out correctly, but did not reveal further details on the matter, arguing that once they define the “carrying out” process, customs will inform the community about it.
For its part, two years ago, the authority planned to sell the assets under its possession, but before finalizing the procedure, it decided to stop the sale due to concerns related to illicit activities; citing that the confiscated BTC could return to the hands of potential criminals to finance criminal activities. However, with a radical change in this assessment, Pylkkänen points out that the sale is scheduled and that “This expectation will not change anymore,” and that although the Finnish Customs Law grants the possibility of destroying BTC units or delivering them to another agency, the most viable option for the entity is sale.
“Under the Customs Act, we had the option of handing them over to another government agency or some other party and destroying them. We have come to the conclusion that alternatives other than sales are not realistic.”
According to the official, in 2019, the State Audit Office drew the attention of Customs for retaining the confiscated assets, indicating that the agency should sell them. Pylkkänen also pointed out that once the sale of the BTC is completed, the money received from it will be made available to the Finnish Ministry of Finance.
Bitcoins associated with Ryuk are exchanged on Binance and Huobi
One of the biggest concerns cited by the Finnish customs authority regarding the sale of confiscated BTC is that these will be reused in illicit activities. Recently, cryptocurrency forensics firm, Advanced Intelligence, together with Hyas, he noted in a report that the BTC involved with the Ryuk ransomware, and its illicit activities, are “laundered” or cleaned within cryptocurrency exchanges such as Binance and Huobi. However, Advanced Intelligence also noted that thanks to the transparency of the blockchain Bitcoin has been able to track and monitor a total of 61 addresses associated with this ransomware, which has been sending digital assets to addresses mainly associated with these exchanges in order to exchange them and withdraw them as fiat money.
At press time, Bitcoin is trading at $37.440 USD, with a drop of more than 9% in the last few hours.
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