FRANKFURT, Germany — A German state
cashed in on 100 million euros worth of
crypto-currency confiscated from drug
traffickers earlier this year, the prosecutor's office in Frankfurt said Wednesday.
اضافة اعلان
The seized assets were sold off this month
through a partnership with local bank Scheich, with the proceeds flowing into
the accounts of the regional government of Hesse.
Working together with the bank, prosecutors
said in a statement they had found "a legally secure way to put crypto
assets back on the regular market".
The crypto-currency was secured in a
"wide-ranging investigation" by prosecutors' internet crime unit,
targeting three people involved in narcotics trading.
Possession of the confiscated resources
passed to the regional government after the culprits handed over their
ill-gotten gains and were given "multi-year prison sentences" in
July.
As well as bitcoin, a further nine different
crypto-currencies were sold off during the operation, prosecutor Jana Ringwald
told the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
The tainted crypto-assets had to be re-declared
as "clean" before Frankfurt-based
bank Scheich was able to
reintroduce them to the open market, according to local media.
The state of Hesse has agreed a long-term
contract with the bank, which positions itself as a crypto-currency specialist,
to sell off other seized crypto assets in the future.
In October, prosecutors in the neighboring
state of North Rhine-Westphalia directly auctioned 215 bitcoins confiscated
from criminals involved in internet crime, collecting almost 12 million euros.
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