Turkey adds crypto firms to terror financing rules

Turkey has added cryptocurrency trading platforms to the list of firms covered by anti-money laundering and terrorism financing regulation, it said in a presidential decree published early May 1.

The move came after a ban on using cryptocurrencies for making payments introduced in response to claims that such transactions are too risky took effect in Turkey on April 30.

The presidential decree makes "crypto-asset service providers" responsible for seeing their assets are not used illegally. The decree immediately went into force with its publication in the Official Gazette.

Turkish authorities last month launched fraud investigations into two cryptocurrency exchanges, Thodex and Vebitcoin.

Six suspects linked to the Thodex probe were jailed on April 30, pending trial.

The investigation into Thodex, which handled daily trades of hundreds of millions of dollars, initially led to the detentions of more than 70 people after customers complained of not being able to access their funds.

Interpol issued a detention warrant for the firm's CEO, Faruk Fatih Özer, on Turkey's behalf. Turkey has sent two five-member police teams to Albania, where Özer fled after the Thodex website went offline abruptly and trapped cryptocurrency codes of nearly 400,000 customers on April 19.

Özer met with an Albanian couple in Istanbul nearly a month before running away, daily Milliyet reported yesterday.

The total assets allegedly seized by Özer is around $108 million, legal experts told the Turk-ish Interior Ministry after initial examinations.

Vebitcoin Founder İlker Baş, his wife and two employees were also arrested after it halted operations on April 23. Baş has been accused of making XRP altcoin transactions worth over $24...

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