Finland’s government is considering supporting Ukraine using part of the proceeds from liquidation of many millions of dollars of cryptocurrency that was seized during criminal investigations. Finnish authorities want to sell the bitcoins soon and say they couldn’t come up with a better idea for the proceeds.
Finland selects brokers to sell $75 million of Confiscated crypto
Authorities in Helsinki have recently chosen two brokers to organize the sale of over €71 million ($75 million) worth of bitcoin (BTC) in the coming weeks. Finnish Customs sized the coins in an investigation into drug trafficking and related crimes.
Bloomberg stated that the agency had signed two-year agreements with Coinmotion Oy & Tesseract Group Oy. The agency plans to sell cryptocurrency during spring and summer. One hundred eighty-nine of the 1,981 Bitcoins currently held by the customs department will be made available.
They were most often confiscated by raids which took place prior to 2018. The State Treasury issued guidelines in 2018 for the storage of digital currency. It prohibited the customs authorities from keeping it on crypto-exchanges and demanded that they be kept offline.
Last July, а tender was launched for brokers that can help the Finnish government turn the digital assets into fiat currency. Pekka Pylkkanen (Finnish Customs Director for Financial Management) stated that there is a need to find a permanent method of selling cryptocurrency forfeited from the state coffers.
Ukraine’s Finest Government Will Donate Half the Proceeds from Crypto Sale
Finland plans to spend a lot of the fiat it gets from the sale on Ukraine. This country was attacked by Russia in February. Helsingin Sanomat published the news on Wednesday, quoting reliable sources, and confirmed that this was indeed the decision.
The government is yet to determine how much of the total will be sent to Kyiv, but in any case, the donation will represent a serious increase in Helsinki’s assistance for the Ukrainians. Since 2014, the Nordic country has granted the Eastern European nation €85 million. In February, the Finland government approved €14 million in humanitarian and development aid to Ukraine.
In March, the Finnish government started to consider using bitcoins for funding Ukraine. Sending the crypto directly was also discussed as both the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees accept crypto donations, but it was eventually decided to convert the coins.
On Wednesday, Finland’s Minister of Finance Annika Saarikko confirmed the country will provide Ukraine with more than half of the money raised in the crypto sale which is expected to bring €70–80 million.
“I am open to whether these tens of millions of euros would now be quickly allocated as humanitarian aid in the middle of the war or also in part for reconstruction work in due course. That day is coming too,” Saarikko stated, while also noting she couldn’t think of a better use for the bitcoin.
What do you think of Finland’s initiative to share some of the seized cryptocurrency with Ukraine? Comment below.
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