AML Efforts Enter a New Phase
According to a recent article published on the official WeChat account of the People's Bank of China (PBoC), Deputy Governor Xuan Changneng announced that China's anti-money laundering (AML) work has entered a new stage of high-quality development. The country has achieved notable results in combating money laundering and related illegal activities. In the full year of 2025, courts across the nation convicted more than 2,000 cases under Article 191 of the Criminal Law, which specifically addresses money laundering. This figure underscores the judiciary's intensified focus on money laundering crimes, especially those involving virtual currencies.
Virtual Currency Laundering Targeted
Xuan stressed that regulatory authorities will ramp up efforts to combat professional money laundering, virtual currency money laundering, and cross-border money laundering, aiming to improve the efficiency and quality of investigations, prosecutions, and convictions. Virtual currencies, due to their pseudo-anonymity and ease of cross-border movement, are increasingly exploited by criminal organizations as a tool for laundering illicit funds. These groups take advantage of differences and loopholes in legal systems and regulatory rules among various countries and regions, and use methods such as nominee accounts, fund offsetting (offsetting transactions without actual cross-border movement), and virtual currencies to conceal the flow of funds. These techniques are highly covert, presenting fresh challenges for financial regulators and law enforcement agencies globally.
Call for Stronger International Cooperation
Facing the growing complexity of cross-border money laundering, Deputy Governor Xuan called on countries to strengthen cross-border coordination and cooperation in intelligence sharing, case investigations, and asset recovery. Since money laundering activities often span multiple jurisdictions, unilateral efforts by any single country are insufficient to root out the problem. Only through joint international action can the spread of new types of criminal activities such as virtual currency money laundering be effectively curbed, thereby safeguarding the security and stability of the global financial system.