Colombia’s Attorney General’s Office announced the detention of eight people allegedly involved in laundering drug-trafficking proceeds through cryptocurrency, in an operation coordinated with U.S. authorities. The source gives no calendar date for the announcement. U.S. prosecutors allege that seven of the detainees used deposits, cryptocurrency tokens and small transactions to obscure the origin of illicit funds.
The eighth detainee, Nassim Orfale Vasquez, was indicted in a separate U.S. case. According to the IRS, he processed more than $42 million in suspicious cryptocurrency transactions since 2018. Colombia’s Attorney General’s Office said the detainees will undergo extradition procedures under Colombian law, with due process; their extradition has not been reported as completed.
