The Finland government aims to support Ukraine with funds which the government raised through the liquidation of millions of dollars in bitcoin seized during criminal investigations. The bitcoins will be sold soon by Finnish authorities, who claim they haven’t come up with a better plan for the revenues.
Helsinki authorities have selected two brokers to organise the sale of around €71 million ($75 million) in bitcoin (BTC) in the coming weeks. The country owns the coins that were seized by Finnish Customs during drug trafficking and other criminal investigations.
As per the report, citing an emailed statement, that the agency has signed two-year contracts with Coinmotion Oy and Tesseract Group Oy and aims to sell the cryptocurrency in the spring and early summer. The customs agency will release 1,890 bitcoins out of a total of 1,981.
The majority of them were seized in operations that took place prior to 2018. The State Treasury issued guidelines for their safekeeping that year, prohibiting the customs authority from storing the digital currency on a crypto market and requiring it to be kept offline.
A tender was introduced in July for brokers who can assist the Finnish government in converting digital assets into fiat currency. Pekka Pylkkanen, Director of Financial Management at Finnish Customs, said at the time that the agency is looking for a long-term solution for selling bitcoins that have been forfeited to the government.
Finland plans to spend a major percentage of the fiat currency proceeds from the sale to increase financial aid to Ukraine, which was occupied by Russia in late February. The decision has already been made, according to the Helsingin Sanomat newspaper, which cited informed sources.
The government has yet to decide how much of the total would be given to Kyiv, but the donation will constitute a significant boost in Helsinki’s support to Ukrainians in any scenario. Since 2014, the Nordic country has provided €85 million to the Eastern European republic. Finland’s government approved €14 million in humanitarian and development aid for Ukraine in February.
Finland’s Finance Minister Annika Saarikko said on Wednesday that the country will supply Ukraine with more than half of the proceeds from the crypto sale, which is projected to raise €70–80 million.
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