Deputy Governor of the People’s Bank of China: Strengthen efforts to combat money laundering involving virtual currencies; over 2,000 money laundering cases were adjudicated last year.

TechFlow News, June 23: According to an article published on the official WeChat account of the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), Xu Changneng, Deputy Governor of the PBOC, stated that China’s anti-money laundering (AML) efforts have entered a new phase of high-quality development, with significant achievements in combating money laundering and related criminal activities. In 2025, over 2,000 cases nationwide were adjudicated under Article 191 of the Criminal Law—pertaining to the crime of money laundering. Since 2022, enforcement authorities have intensified efforts against professional money laundering, virtual currency-based money laundering, and cross-border money laundering, thereby improving the quality and efficiency of investigations, prosecutions, and judicial rulings related to money laundering crimes.

Criminal syndicates exploit legal, regulatory, and supervisory gaps across jurisdictions for arbitrage, employing methods such as “straw-man” accounts, fund “matching” transactions, and virtual currencies to obscure fund flows. These tactics pose new challenges to financial supervision and law enforcement globally and urgently require enhanced cross-border coordination and cooperation among countries—particularly in intelligence sharing, case investigations, and asset recovery.