The Monetary Motion Activity Power (FATF) revealed steering for presidency investigation groups to recuperate bitcoin (BTC) and different digital property utilized in legal actions. This, making an allowance for that greater than 80% of jurisdictions present low effectiveness in seizures.
The Asset Restoration Information and Greatest Practices particulars fast steps, from insurance policies to sufferer returns. “Public blockchains present immutable, real-time ledgers that assist speedy tracing and restoration,” the FATF states in its publication.
With the brand new set of suggestions, bitcoin seizures will be made extra successfully and shortly than conventional high-value items, as Chainalysis observes in its report revealed as we speak, November 13, 2025. Its analysis just lately revealed that greater than 90,000 bitcoin stay illicit, awaiting seizure by governments.
The information urges prioritizing digital property to guard world monetary techniques. And relating to this, the FATF calls for deal with bitcoin and cryptocurrencies as a definite asset class. It additionally requires accelerating legal guidelines that add readability to realize pace in seizures.
The information insists that coaching ought to start from preliminary contact with the suspect or crime scene. It recommends coaching not solely cash laundering and terrorist financing specialists, but in addition non-financial personnel, akin to cops, to determine bitcoin and cryptocurrency instantly. This contains seizing {hardware} wallets throughout raids, seed phrases in paperwork or digital information, accounts on exchanges, and cryptoasset wallets on units linked to crime.
Nevertheless, the FATF information, though exhaustive in elements akin to monitoring, preliminary seizure and safe storage utilizing chilly wallets or multi-signature wallets, presents a notable omission in particular suggestions to forestall inside theft throughout judicial custody of digital property.
This omission turns into significantly evident when contemplating actual circumstances such because the one which occurred in Spain in April 2025. In that nation, an worker of the judicial administration in Marbella was arrested for the theft of roughly 17 million euros in seized crypto property, in what turned the biggest operation of this kind within the nation so far.
The incident, investigated by the Nationwide Police, revealed vulnerabilities in inside custody protocols. It is because the suspect accessed the non-public keys of digital asset wallets underneath judicial management, transferring the funds to private accounts after ready three months to keep away from fast detection.
In direct response to the April 2025 theft, the Spanish Ministry of the Inside awarded Prosegur on November 11, 2025 a contract for two.8 million euros (about $3.24 million) for the cloud administration and custody of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies seized in police raids, as reported by CriptoNoticias.
If something, the hole within the FATF steering—which doesn’t explicitly handle insider threats akin to background checks, periodic audits, or entry segregation for judicial workers—underlines the necessity for international locations to enrich these world suggestions with extra sturdy native insurance policies.
Whereas the doc emphasizes preserving the worth of property by means of transfers to nationwide custody packages (akin to Peru’s Nationwide Seized Property Program), doesn’t supply detailed methods to mitigate corruption dangers or inside neglect in extended custody phases, which may encourage future updates based mostly on classes from incidents akin to Spanish.
