My Lords, I, too, welcome the Minister’s introduction of these regulations. I assure him and the Government of our continued support for these measures. In the debate that we had last week, we made our continued support absolutely clear.
There are a couple of points I want to focus on. These were raised by my honourable friend Stephen Doughty in the other place in relation to cryptocurrencies being used to evade sanctions and particularly how they can be used to inject capital into the democracies of the world for the purposes of swaying elections. During the Commons debate, Stephen Doughty asked why the Government have not yet sanctioned Tornado Cash and Blender, two cryptocurrency services already sanctioned by the United States. While I am pleased that the Minister confirmed that the Government are looking at sanctioning those two organisations, I hope the Minister can update tonight about when we can expect further legislation in this regard.
Just picking up the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, the Minister in the Commons was unable to update the House on the steps taken to pursue greater global regulation of cryptocurrencies. I hope the Minister can tell us whether the United Kingdom mission to the United Nations has taken part in any discussions on this and whether the point was raised at the annual meeting of the IMF and the World Bank earlier this month, in addition to answering some of the other points that the noble Baroness has raised.
Since the invasion of Ukraine by Putin’s regime, there has been a huge increase in rouble to crypto trades resulting from individuals and businesses wanting to evade sanctions on cross-border payments. Will the Minister tell us what the Government are doing to monitor the providers used for these exchanges?
Finally, earlier this month the US Government fined Bittrex, a cryptocurrency exchange, for repeated violations of sanctions. Will the Minister tell us, specifically and in a more general sense, how we are working with the United States and other allies on investigations such as these so that we can ensure that our measures have full compliance? As the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, repeatedly says, sanctions are not effective unless we act in concert with others, so I hope the Minister can respond on these points.