UK AML regulations may violate privacy rights, Coin Center states

• Coin Center submitted its stance in brief in a comment letter to H.M. Treasury on June 7.
• The center pleads that the U.K. instead seek uniformity with the approach of the U.S.

Coin Center, a non-profit crypto advocacy center, has recently appealed Her Majesty’s Treasury not to expand the scope of the United Kingdom’s anti-money laundering/counter-terrorism financing (AML/CFT) regulations. As per a report, Coin Center is concerned about H.M. Treasury’s plans to apparently “impose data collection and reporting requirements on not only cryptocurrency developers, but all open-source software developers and others who facilitate the peer-to-peer exchange of crypto assets.” 

Coin Center submitted its stance in brief in a comment letter to H.M. Treasury on June 7, which discusses the government’s planned transposition of the European Union (E.U.)’s Fifth AML Directive (AMLD5) into national law.  In its comment letter, Coin Center suggests that H.M. Treasury is broadening the basic framework of AMLD5 with its additional provisions that go beyond the minimum that would be required to harmonize the U.K.’s financial surveillance policy with the E.U.’s directive.

As per Coin Center, U.K. should seek inspiration from the way the U.S. has been approaching the same issue. The U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network’s (FinCEN) interpretation only brings persons who have “independent control” over another person’s crypto assets under the watchful eyes of the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA).

According to Coin Center, these steps are necessary. They “believe that such tools are necessary to protect human dignity and autonomy, and argue that they are of profound political and societal importance in a world where transactions are increasingly surveilled and controlled by a handful of private financial intermediaries and powerful governments.”

Coin Center asserts that expanding AML surveillance will “violate U.K. citizens’ free speech and privacy rights, as codified in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and in the European Convention on Human Rights.”