China’s Supreme People’s Procuratorate, the country’s highest prosecution authority, just told its prosecutors to stop playing defense on crypto crime. New recommendations released on July 12 call for proactive investigation of cryptocurrency-related money laundering, complete with updated evidentiary standards that could fundamentally change how cases are built and prosecuted.
The proposals, articulated by Hunan Province prosecutors and a law professor in the official Procuratorate Daily, introduce a straightforward but aggressive principle: if someone uses a mixer, transacts with privacy coins, or sells crypto assets at non-market prices, that alone may constitute sufficient evidence of criminal intent. In English: the tools designed for financial privacy are now being treated as smoking guns.
The ‘one case, two checks’ framework
At the center of the new guidance sits a proposed investigative principle called “one case, two checks.” Every major crime case that crosses a prosecutor’s desk should automatically trigger a secondary review for potential money laundering elements. Investigators working a fraud case, a corruption probe, or a drug trafficking bust would now be expected to specifically look for crypto-based laundering regardless of whether digital assets were initially flagged in the case.
