EU Parliament Receives Petition to Compensate Victims of Crypto Crime
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Petition to Compensate Victims of Crypto Crime
In the filing, the petitioner has highlighted that victims under digital asset crime are leaked out of millions of euros annually. He even indicated that the European Parliament had previously called for regulating digital assets. Although, as of yet no regulation has been called for setting up crypto-asset funding for compensating victims directly under crypto crimes.
Hence, the petitioner is seeking regulatory frameworks for compensating victims under crypto crimes such as fraud, piracy, and illegal extortion or making criminal use out of crypto assets.
Usually, victims in an attempt to recover their losses have to resort to various means including legal proceedings in national courts, criminal complaints to national authorities, bank transfers, credit card reversals as well as blockchain tracings.
Most of the time, none of the above-mentioned tactics works due to the multi-jurisdictional nature of the cryptocurrency transaction. The petitioner even indicates that neither the European Commission nor the European Ombudsman is competent in this matter.
Levy wants the European Union to implement a 0.0001 cent per euro fee on cryptocurrency transactions collected to the crypto crime victim fund.
No Justice for Victims of Crypto Crime
Levy has previously represented victims under crypto crimes who have suffered losses exceeding upto €50 million ($60.7 million) and is joined by class representatives for around 240,000 account holders that were caught up in the alleged exit scam by Irish cryptocurrency exchange Bitsane. At today’s current prices, the total amount of victims' funds lost to the Bitsane exchange would be worth around €1 billion ($1.2 billion).
According to Levy, victims of the collapsed Bitsane cryptocurrency exchange are still awaiting justice. He even claimed that Irish authorities had accomplished little or nothing in tracking the stolen funds of Bitsane users.