March 29, 2024

Brazilian Police Investigate Six Cryptocurrency Exchanges

Article Reading Time:
2 minutes.

Brazilian Police Investigate Six Cryptocurrency Exchanges

The Federal Police and the Brazilian Tax Service have begun the final phase of Operation Colossus, which is investigating the activities of trading platforms.

For four years the police workedmainly in four states of the country: Rio de Janeiro, Bahia, Sao Paulo and Santa Catarina. The investigation involves 158 government officials, including 130 federal police officers and 28 tax officials. They raided the offices of six cryptocurrency exchanges and four foreign exchange companies suspected of money laundering. According to police, the offenders made suspicious transactions using cryptocurrencies totaling $391 million.

“We are talking about monetary resources thatentered the financial system through shell companies. They passed through transit accounts and were then converted into crypto assets that could be used abroad,” Brazilian Federal Police said.

Law enforcement agencies claim thatThree groups of organizations participated in the implementation of this criminal plan. The first group were arbitrage agents who bought large volumes of crypto assets in the USA, Singapore and Hong Kong. The second includes cryptocurrency exchanges that acted as intermediaries. The name of the trading platforms is not reported. Finally, the scheme involved shell companies and incompetent individuals whose names were used to purchase crypto assets. Among them were dead people and elderly people over 90 years old. More than 1,300 fictitious companies were managed by one accountant.

Last year, Brazilian policeOperation Kryptos detained the creators of the cryptocurrency fraudulent scheme GAS Consultoria. Its founder Glaidson Acácio dos Santos, known as the “Pharaoh of Bitcoin,” tried to run for parliament, but the court disqualified him from participating in the elections.