As digital assets and cryptocurrencies become more embedded in commercial activity, UK courts are shaping how they’re treated under the law. The legal landscape surrounding digital assets such as cryptocurrencies remains in rapid evolution in the United Kingdom. Recent court decisions in 2024 and 2025 have increasingly addressed critical issues,
The EBA’s May 2024 report confirms there is no legal definition of “virtual IBANs” (vIBANs) in EU law. What many PSPs sell as vIBANs are IBAN-formatted identifiers that route to a separate “master account”. This architecture creates reconciliation benefits for merchants, but also a long list of AML/CFT, prudential, and
The big announcement Last week, nine European banks—including ING, UniCredit, Danske Bank, SEB, KBC, CaixaBank, Raiffeisen Bank International, DekaBank, and Banca Sella—announced their intention to issue a euro-denominated stablecoin by 2026 jointly. Billed as a pan-European public–private initiative, this move is positioned as a strategic response to the increasing dominance
When Europe’s payment institutions (PIs) and electronic-money institutions (EMIs) still show structural AML/CFT weaknesses, it’s reckless to assume stablecoin issuers—often EMIs themselves—will perform better. Any bank offering operating, reserve or settlement accounts to a fiat-backed stablecoin issuer faces two rails (fiat + on-chain). Both must be managed to AML standards—or
Europe built fast, low-cost payment rails. Victims deceived into initiating payments are still left alone. Our paper, a contribution to the ongoing discussion, sets out a solution based on the experience we made during the past years: treat fraudulently induced payments as unauthorised, make reimbursement the default at the payer’s
Carter-Ruck, one of the UK’s most feared libel law firms, is facing disciplinary proceedings over its role in the £4 billion OneCoin scam. The Solicitors Regulation Authority alleges partner Claire Gill made an improper threat designed to silence criticism, raising serious questions about how elite law firms can become financial
Late last night, a federal jury in New York delivered an interesting decision in the fight against crypto‑enabled money laundering. Roman Storm, co‑founder of the Ethereum mixer Tornado Cash, was found guilty of operating an unlicensed money‑transmitting business—a conviction of a decentralized mixer operator in the United States. While the
Five Years of Silence: EFRI Demands DNB Report – for the Scam Victims and the StabIR License Review In September 2020, the Dutch financial supervisory authority, De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB), finalised a supervisory report on Payvision B.V. That report—according to official sources—confirmed serious and structural AML breaches, directly linked to
As digital payments surge across Britain, the UK has become Europe’s most advanced cashless society, processing more than 48 billion electronic payments in 2023 alone. But with this progress comes a sharp rise in “push payment” fraud (APP fraud), making robust consumer protection more vital than ever. The UK’s new
EFRI, a qualified entity under the Austrian Collective Redress Act (QEG), has been fighting online investment fraud across Europe. In this article, we expose Finleaks.com and Finleaks.media as a retaliatory defamation platform created by individuals connected to convicted cybercriminals. The site attacks EFRI and its leadership through false claims, personal
