FCA Raids 8 Sites in First UK Crackdown on Illegal Peer-to-Peer Crypto Trading

Key Takeaways:

• The FCA raided 8 premises connected April 22, 2026, issuing cease and desist letters successful the UK’s archetypal P2P crypto crackdown.
• SWROCU’s DI Ross Flay cited wealth laundering risk, with grounds from the raids supporting aggregate transgression investigations.
• The FCA’s Firm Checker instrumentality remains the superior assets for consumers arsenic enforcement of crypto AML rules intensifies successful 2026.

FCA Targets Unregistered Peer-to-Peer Crypto Traders successful Coordinated UK Raids

The FCA conducted the inspections alongside HM Revenue and Customs and the South West Regional Organised Crime Unit. At each site, agents issued cease and desist letters ordering traders to halt operations immediately.

Peer-to-peer crypto trading involves individuals buying and selling integer assets straight with 1 another, bypassing a centralized exchange. Under U.K. law, that enactment requires FCA registration. Currently, nary registered peer-to-peer crypto traders oregon platforms run legally successful the country.

Evidence gathered during the inspections is present feeding into aggregate ongoing transgression investigations.

Image source: FCA property merchandise connected the raids.

Steve Smart, enforcement manager of enforcement and marketplace oversight astatine the FCA, said unregistered peer-to-peer traders are operating illegally and creating fiscal transgression risks. “We will usage our powers and enactment with partners to disrupt them,” Smart stated.

Detective Inspector Ross Flay of SWROCU pointed to wealth laundering arsenic a cardinal concern. Flay said the extremity is to halt amerciable traders from giving criminals a way to move, hide, and walk illicit funds.

The enactment was taken nether the Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds Regulations 2017, the superior ineligible model governing anti-money laundering compliance for crypto firms successful the United Kingdom.

This is not the FCA’s archetypal determination against unregistered crypto activity. In June 2024, the bureau worked with the Metropolitan Police Service to apprehension 2 individuals suspected of moving an amerciable crypto plus exchange. The FCA has besides antecedently prosecuted an relation moving an amerciable web of crypto ATMs.

The U.K. government’s National Risk Assessment of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing identifies crypto assets arsenic an progressively communal conveyance for laundering proceeds from transgression activity. The FCA says it continues moving with home and planetary partners to code that risk.

Smart besides directed consumers to usage the FCA’s Firm Checker instrumentality earlier dealing with immoderate crypto firm. He noted that crypto remains a high-risk concern and is mostly unregulated successful the U.K. extracurricular of anti-money laundering and fiscal promotion rules.

The FCA has not named the individuals oregon businesses targeted successful Tuesday’s sweep. Investigators person not said erstwhile charges, if any, volition beryllium filed. For U.S. consumers and investors watching cross-border regulatory trends, the FCA’s determination signals that peer-to-peer crypto trading extracurricular licensed platforms is drafting nonstop instrumentality enforcement attraction successful large markets.

The bureau said it volition proceed utilizing its powers to prosecute unregistered operators.