Western governments are being urged to tighten controls on cryptocurrency after new research warned that criminals and hostile states have laundered an estimated $350 billion using crypto over the past two decades, Politico reported.

The report, produced for the Henry Jackson Society think tank and shared with Politico, argues that money laundering activity has shifted “dramatically” toward cryptocurrency in recent years. It draws on a database of 164 publicly identified and documented money laundering cases from 2005 to 2025, compiled by Alexander Browder, the son of financier and anti-corruption campaigner Bill Browder.

Alexander Browder told the news outlet that the true scale of laundering could be “many multiples” higher than the hundreds of billions identified. The report finds that the United States, Russia and Britain have the highest number of confirmed cases, Politico said.

The research also points to weak enforcement outcomes. The study found 79 percent of cases resulted in no convictions, and that authorities recovered only 29 percent of laundered funds, the news agency said.

Researchers behind the study called on the U.K. government to create a Cryptocurrency Asset Recovery Office to hold recovered funds for return to rightful owners. Chris Coghlan, a member of the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee, said the speed and sophistication of crypto money launderers is outpacing the government’s response, leaving sanctions and law enforcement “in an increasingly weak position,” Politico reported.

A central focus of the report is Russia’s growing use of crypto as an alternative channel to finance its war economy and evade sanctions following the invasion of Ukraine. Browder told Politico that Russia is becoming a global epicenter for illicit crypto activity, claiming that half of the illicit exchanges in the database were based in Russia, that four of five major ransomware groups in the database were based there, and pointing to darknet marketplaces such as Hydra, which he said processed more than $5 billion in illicit funds.

Read more at Politico