Bitcoin

Sweden’s Justice Minister Says To ‘Turn Up The Pressure’ On Crypto Seizures

The Swedish Minister of Justice has called on local authorities to focus on repression that could cause greater crises of assets, in particular cryptocurrency under a 2024 law which allows the confiscation of the luxury articles and money of individuals even if they are not the target of an investigation.

According to a report on Thursday of the Dagens Industrian financial media, the Minister of Justice Gunnar Strömmer said that the local police, the tax authorities and the Swedish Application Authorities should devote more efforts in the cases likely to produce a cryptography product, real estate and other business assets. The Minister of Justice said that the government had seized more than $ 8.3 million in criminal profits since 2024.

Law, Sweden, Europe, crimes
Swedish Minister of Justice Gunnar Strömmer. Source: Ninni Andersson / Government offices of Sweden

The repressions came from a Swedish law which entered into force in November 2024, allowing the authorities to confiscate luxury articles and large sums of money from individuals, even if they were not the objectives of an official survey. It is not known to what extent the $ 8.3 million that would have been seized were linked to the crypto.

“”[It] Will be possible to take assets with a criminal origin of criminals, whether or not they may be proven that someone has committed a real offense, “said the director’s body of Sweden in October 2024 after the adoption of the law:

“This means that a person who, for example, has large quantities of money, significant banking assets or luxury items can allow them if they have no income proportional to property and cannot explain otherwise where it comes.”

In relation: The Swedish government paid $ 1.5 million in Bitcoin to the sentenced drug trafficker

The law, which, according to legislators, has been adopted to combat violent crimes in Sweden, had its controversies. The economist suggested in December that a woman traveling via Gothenburg-Llandvetter airport had $ 137,000 and a Watch Rolex seized, while the authorities said they had confiscated around $ 1 million in goods during the first week of application.

The legislator calls a bitcoin reserve

In April, the Swedish deputy Rickard Nordin sent a letter to the country’s Minister of Finance to ask him to consider adding Bitcoin (BTC) as a reserve. Nordin suggested that Sweden imitates the “neutral” American approach to a crypto stock by not selling BTC seized by the authorities.