UK’s economic crime centre ranks crypto third-biggest threat, behind only lawyers and politically exposed persons

The UK’s National Economic Crime Centre (NECC) has ranked cryptoassets as the country’s third-biggest economic crime priority, citing their growing use by criminal networks to move and conceal illicit funds. The assessment, published this week, places crypto behind professional enablers, including corrupt lawyers and accountants, and politically exposed persons among nine priorities agreed with the Financial Conduct Authority, Home Office and Treasury.

The classification puts cryptoasset activity above cash and money mules in the NECC’s list, which is designed to help shape compliance and risk-management efforts across regulated firms. The agency also indicated that it wants to strengthen its ability to identify and pursue crypto-related laundering activity through its own intelligence capabilities.

The latest assessment comes as authorities continue to investigate increasingly sophisticated financial networks that combine traditional laundering methods with newer technologies. The NECC estimates that more than £100 billion is laundered through the UK annually, although it does not provide a separate estimate for the amount involving cryptoassets.

Crypto emerges as a major economic crime priority

The NECC said criminal groups are adapting rapidly as they seek to avoid detection and transfer illicit value across borders.

Criminals are making “innovative use of crypto asset products to evade detection and move illicit value at scale,” the NECC said in its threat assessment.

The agency said laundering networks increasingly operate across jurisdictions and combine established techniques with emerging technologies. Rather than laundering criminal proceeds themselves, some organized crime groups are now paying specialist networks to perform the task on their behalf.

The report also identifies synthetic identities, automated attacks against banks and artificial intelligence as emerging tools being incorporated into financial crime operations. Together, these developments have increased the complexity of the economic crime threat facing authorities and financial institutions.

The NECC said it is developing “a more proactive and intelligence-led crypto capability.”

That approach could see the agency place greater emphasis on tracing blockchain transactions and identifying the people and organizations behind suspicious flows. Sanctions evasion and ransomware payments have been identified alongside conventional money laundering as areas of particular interest.

NECC targets crypto laundering networks

Blockchain analytics are already widely used by law enforcement agencies to trace cryptocurrency linked to criminal activity. Companies including Chainalysis, Elliptic and TRM Labs provide investigative tools that can help authorities follow transactions across blockchain networks.

The NECC’s stated strategy, however, is to expand its own investigative capacity rather than relying solely on external specialists. The move reflects the growing importance of crypto in the wider economic crime landscape and the increasingly international nature of illicit financial flows.

The agency’s nine priorities are intended to guide regulated businesses as they assess and respond to financial crime risks. By placing cryptoassets in third position, the NECC is signaling that firms should give significant attention to the risks associated with digital assets.

At the same time, the agency has stopped short of supporting a blanket prohibition on privacy-enhancing crypto technologies. A Royal United Services Institute paper published after an NECC-convened roundtable opposed a broad ban on crypto privacy tools.

The position suggests that policymakers are seeking to balance efforts to combat economic crime with concerns that overly broad restrictions could affect legitimate users and financial innovation.

Operation Destabilise records £25 million haul

The NECC’s assessment also provides an updated picture of Operation Destabilise, an ongoing investigation into Russian-speaking networks accused of converting street-level criminal cash into cryptocurrency.

Since the operation began in 2022, authorities have arrested 129 people and seized more than £25 million in cash and cryptoassets across the UK. The latest figure represents one additional arrest compared with the previous update issued by the agency in November.

The NECC said it intends to expand Operation Destabilise, reinforcing the role of cryptocurrency investigations in its broader economic crime strategy.

The operation illustrates how authorities are confronting networks that connect physical cash generated through criminal activity with digital financial infrastructure. By converting illicit cash into cryptoassets, such networks can potentially move value across borders while creating additional challenges for investigators attempting to establish the source and destination of funds.

The NECC’s focus on these networks forms part of a wider effort to disrupt the financial infrastructure supporting organized crime rather than simply pursuing individual offenders.

Operation Atlantic freezes $12 million

The report also highlighted Operation Atlantic, a week-long investigative effort conducted from the NCA’s headquarters in March.

During the operation, investigators identified 20,000 victims of approval-phishing attacks and froze $12 million in suspected illicit funds. The effort involved cooperation with the US Secret Service, cryptocurrency exchanges Coinbase, Binance and Kraken, as well as stablecoin issuer Tether.

Authorities also took down more than 120 scam domains during the operation. One UK victim reportedly lost more than £52,000, equivalent to roughly $66,000, in one of the scams.

The operation demonstrates the increasingly international character of economic crime, with investigators working across law enforcement agencies, cryptocurrency exchanges and digital-asset companies to disrupt fraudulent transactions and recover or freeze funds.

For the NECC, the combination of Operation Destabilise, Operation Atlantic and its planned intelligence-led crypto capability points to a broader shift in how the UK approaches economic crime involving digital assets.

Rather than treating crypto solely as a new financial product, authorities increasingly view it as part of the infrastructure that criminal networks can exploit. The NECC’s decision to rank cryptoassets third among its nine priorities indicates that this threat will remain a significant focus for UK regulators, investigators and compliance teams.

As criminal groups continue combining cryptoassets with synthetic identities, automation and cross-border laundering networks, the agency’s challenge will be to strengthen enforcement without undermining legitimate uses of digital-asset technology. That balance is likely to remain central to the UK’s response to economic crime in the cryptocurrency sector.