Home Office gave out 275 care worker sponsorship visas after ‘forged’ application

Published

1 year ago

March 26, 2024

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The Home Office gave out 275 certificates of sponsorship for care workers after “forged” documents were used to make an application, a damning report into the department has shown.

The probe, by ex-borders and immigration inspector David Neal, claimed the Home Office had a “limited understanding” of the care sector after it was added to the UK’s shortage occupation list in 2022 – allowing more people to come to the country to fill jobs.

And as a result, it created a system that “invited large numbers of low-skilled workers to this country who are at risk from exploitation”.

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The report was released on Tuesday afternoon as MPs wrapped up business in parliament for the Easter recess, alongside another into Border Force operations at London City Airport.

In that investigation, Mr Neal highlighted “failings at a local, regional, and national level” over the arrival of private jets, with high-risk flights not being met by Border Force staff.

The figures on how many high-risk flights were met by officials were redacted, but Mr Neal said the number was “shocking” and needed to be addressed “as a matter of urgency”.

Mr Neal was fired by the Home Office last month after he leaked details of the airport report to a newspaper, with the department saying he had “lost the confidence” of Home Secretary James Cleverly.

But the ex-inspector had repeatedly complained the Home Office was too slow to publish his critical reports.

‘Totally inadequate’

In Mr Neal’s report into social care and immigration, he criticised the department’s “underestimation of demand for the care worker visa”.

While the Home Office had predicted between 6,000 and 40,000 would come through this route each year, 146,182 were granted between February 2022 and October 2023.

The report criticised “the inappropriateness” of the regime in place, and said the “mismatch between its meagre complement of compliance officers and ever-expanding register of licensed sponsors” – with one officer for every 1,600 employers – was “totally inadequate”.

In the example of an employer only known as “company b”, an application had been submitted using forged documents and bank statements in the name of a real care provider.

But despite online checks showing the address they provided showed “no trace” of links to a care home, 275 certificates of sponsorship had been secured, with 181 assigned to workers, “none of whom have arrived to undertake genuine roles”.

It took more than two months after the sponsorship licence was granted to the company for Border Force officers to raise their concerns about those arriving on the visas.

Another example included 1,234 certificates being granted to a company that said it had only four employees when it was given a sponsorship licence.

“In just these two examples, up to 1,500 people could have arrived in this country and been encouraged by a risk of hardship or destitution to work outside the conditions of their visa,” said Mr Neal.

‘Reliant on handouts’

The report also highlighted the tough conditions faced by some workers caught up in the system, pointing to a story from Sky News, where a care worker paid £10,000 to an agent in Nigeria only to find there was no job for her when she arrived in the UK.

And it said inspectors encountered migrants with care visas working illegally in two out of eight enforcement visits carried out over three months in 2023.

The report praised frontline staff at the Home Office dealing with care workers and their awareness to the “serious risk”.

But Mr Neal said: “What worries me most is that the Home Office does not appear to have any process to identify the lessons from this debacle and then bring those lessons into core thinking in order that they are not repeated.”

‘Robust measures’

The former inspector called for a full review of the visa route, sponsorship licensing and compliance, as well as the creation of a multi-agency agreement so each part knows what they are responsible for.

A Home Office spokesperson said they had “already intervened to stop the flow of overseas care workers entering the UK where there is no genuine role for them to undertake” and taken “robust action” against exploitation.

They also insisted new measures were already in place to “cut the rising numbers of visas granted and address significant concerns” about non-compliance, worker exploitation and abuse.

But Labour’s shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, called both reports from Mr Neal “scandalous”, saying they “expose a Conservative government which has lost control of our borders and our border security”.

Politics

Trump tariffs squeeze already struggling Bitcoin miners — Braiins exec

Published

6 hours ago

April 4, 2025

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Trump tariffs squeeze already struggling Bitcoin miners — Braiins exec

The new trade tariffs announced by US President Donald Trump may place added pressure on the Bitcoin mining ecosystem both domestically and globally, according to one industry executive.

While the US is home to Bitcoin (BTC) mining manufacturing firms such as Auradine, it’s still “not possible to make the whole supply chain, including materials, US-based,” Kristian Csepcsar, chief marketing officer at BTC mining tech provider Braiins, told Cointelegraph.

On April 2, Trump announced sweeping tariffs, imposing a 10% tariff on all countries that export to the US and introducing “reciprocal” levies targeting America’s key trading partners.

Community members have debated the potential effects of the tariffs on Bitcoin, with some saying their impact has been overstated, while others see them as a significant threat.

Tariffs compound existing mining challenges

Csepcsar said the mining industry is already experiencing tough times, pointing to key indicators like the BTC hashprice.

Hashprice — a measure of a miner’s daily revenue per unit of hash power spent to mine BTC blocks — has been on the decline since 2022 and dropped to all-time lows of $50 for the first time in 2024.

According to data from Bitbo, the BTC hashprice was still hovering around all-time low levels of $53 on March 30.

“Hashprice is the key metric miners follow to understand their bottom line. It is how many dollars one terahash makes a day. A key profitability metric, and it is at all-time lows, ever,” Csepcsar said.

He added that mining equipment tariffs were already increasing under the Biden administration in 2024, and cited comments from Summer Meng, general manager at Chinese crypto mining supplier Bitmars.

“But they keep getting stricter under Trump,” Csepcsar added, referring to companies such as the China-based Bitmain — the world’s largest ASIC manufacturer — which is subject to the new tariffs.

Trump’s latest measures include a 34% additional tariff on top of an existing 20% levy for Chinese mining imports. In response, China reportedly imposed its own retaliatory tariffs on April 4.

BTC mining firms to “lose in the short term”

Csepcsar also noted that cutting-edge chips for crypto mining are currently massively produced in countries like Taiwan and South Korea, which were hit by new 32% and 25% tariffs, respectively.

“It will take a decade for the US to catch up with cutting-edge chip manufacturing. So again, companies, including American ones, lose in the short term,” he said.

Csepcsar also observed that some countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States region, including Russia and Kazakhstan, have been beefing up mining efforts and could potentially overtake the US in hashrate dominance.

“If we continue to see trade war, these regions with low tariffs and more favorable mining conditions can see a major boom,” Csepcsar warned.

As the newly announced tariffs potentially hurt Bitcoin mining both globally and in the US, it may become more difficult for Trump to keep his promise of making the US the global mining leader.

Trump’s stance on crypto has shifted multiple times over the years. As his administration embraces a more pro-crypto agenda, it remains to be seen how the latest economic policies will impact his long-term strategy for digital assets.

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Malta regulator fines OKX crypto exchange $1.2M for past AML breaches

Published

6 hours ago

April 4, 2025

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Malta regulator fines OKX crypto exchange .2M for past AML breaches

Cryptocurrency exchange OKX is under renewed regulatory scrutiny in Europe after Maltese authorities issued a major fine for violations of Anti-Money Laundering (AML) laws.

Malta’s Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit (FIAU) fined Okcoin Europe — OKX’s Europe-based subsidiary — 1.1 million euros ($1.2 million) after detecting multiple AML failures on the platform in the past, the authority announced on April 3.

While admitting that OKX has significantly improved its AML policies in the past 18 months, the authority “could not ignore” its past compliance failures from 2023, “some of which were deemed to be serious and systematic,” the FIAU notice said.

OKX was among the first crypto exchanges to receive a license under Europe’s new Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation via its Malta hub in January 2025.

The news of the $1.2 million penalty in Malta came after Bloomberg in March reported that European Union regulators were probing OKX for laundering $100 million in funds from the Bybit hack.

Bybit CEO Ben Zhou previously claimed that OKX’s Web3 proxy allowed hackers to launder about $100 million, or 40,233 Ether (ETH), from the $1.5 billion hack that occurred in February.

This is a developing story, and further information will be added as it becomes available.

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US court fines UAE crypto firm CLS Global $428K for wash trading

Published

7 hours ago

April 4, 2025

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US court fines UAE crypto firm CLS Global 8K for wash trading

Authorities in the US state of Massachusetts continue targeting unlawful cryptocurrency market practices, with a local court fining crypto financial services firm CLS Global.

A federal court in Boston on April 2 sentenced CLS Global on criminal charges related to fraudulent manipulation of crypto trading volume, according to an announcement from the Massachusetts US Attorney’s Office.

In addition to a $428,059 fine, the court prohibited CLS Global from offering services in the US for a probation period of three years.

CLS Global, a crypto market maker registered in the United Arab Emirates, in January pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit market manipulation and one count of wire fraud.

CLS agreed to manipulate the FBI’s “trap token” NexFundAI

The charges against CLS Global followed an undercover law enforcement operation involving NexFundAI, a token created by the FBI as part of a sting operation in May 2024.

CLS Global was among at least three firms that took the FBI’s bait and agreed to provide “market maker services” for NexFundAI, including a fraudulent scheme to attract investors to purchase the token.

In October 2024, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced fraud charges against CLS and its employee, Andrey Zhorzhes. The US securities regulator also filed complaints against two other NexFundAI manipulators, Hong Kong-linked ZM Quant Investment and Russia-linked Gotbit Consulting.

CLS Global’s profile

According to CLS Global CEO Filipp Veselov, the company was founded in 2017 to fill in a “huge gap in the market for high-quality market-making solutions and trading consulting.”

Prior to CLS, Veselov worked at the Russian cryptocurrency exchange platform Latoken, which is advertised as a “global digital asset exchange” and has about 370,000 followers on X.

The CLS team also includes chief revenue officer Pavel Singaevskii, who previously served as sales manager at Stex, a crypto platform that reportedly ceased operations without warning in 2023.

US court fines UAE crypto firm CLS Global $428K for wash trading — *Source:* *CLS Global*

According to CLS Global’s X page, the platform continues operating and has more than 110,000 followers at the time of publication.

How much wash trading is in crypto?

Wash trading is an illegal practice involving artificially inflating trading volume by repeatedly buying and selling the same asset, generating a misleading perception of demand.

According to a January 2025 report by the US blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis, the crypto market has at least $2.6 billion in estimated wash traded volumes, or just about 2% of total daily crypto trading volumes, as reported by CoinGecko.

Some studies indicate that wash trading makes up a bigger share of the crypto market.

In 2022, the US National Bureau of Economic Research reported that illegal wash trading may account for as much as 70% of average trading volumes on unregulated exchanges.

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