On Wednesday, the European Commission published its new strategy to fight an organized crime ecosystem that has become increasingly digitized.
The report, published on April 14, outlines a strategic time frame of 2021-2025 and heavily focused on the challenge of investigating organized crime within the European Union. Specific risk areas cited in the report include cryptocurrency transactions, dark markets, and malware, among others.
As the report noted:
“To detect and prosecute organised crime, investigators need to detect suspicious online activity, to track virtual currencies criminal transactions, to understand what they found (data can be encrypted or must be put in context with other data), to preserve the data and to use them as electronic evidence in court.”
On the topic of organized crime transactions, the report stated that despite developments on the legal front, such activities are difficult to detect.
“Despite the development of the anti-money laundering and asset
