Sir Chris Wormald named as new cabinet secretary and head of civil service

Published

4 months ago

December 2, 2024

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Sir Chris Wormald has been named as the new cabinet secretary and head of the civil service.

The 56-year-old, who will now advise the prime minister on key policy decisions, will replace Simon Case on 16 December after he announced he is stepping down for health reasons.

Sir Chris is currently permanent secretary at the Department of Health and Social Care, advising the health secretary on policy and managing the budget since 2016 – all through the COVID pandemic.

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Sir Keir Starmer, who gave final approval for Sir Chris, said he “brings a wealth of experience to this role at a critical moment in the work of change this new government has begun”.

The decision to promote Sir Chris is the biggest of Sir Keir’s premiership so far, with the civil servant having overseen large-scale reforms of several government departments – something that will have appealed to the PM.

The prime minister said his “mission-led” administration will change the way government serves the country, which “will require nothing less than the complete re-wiring of the British state to deliver bold and ambitious long-term reform”.

“Delivering this scale of change will require exceptional civil service leadership,” Sir Keir added.

“There could be no one better placed to drive forward our plan for change than Chris, and I look forward to working with him as we fulfil the mandate of this new government, improving the lives of working people and strengthening our country with a decade of national renewal.”

What does a cabinet secretary do?

They are the most senior civil service adviser to the prime minister and his cabinet.

Their role is to support and advise on the running of cabinet and cabinet committees, helping prepare agendas and supporting the government in reaching a collective agreement on policies.

They are often one of the PM’s senior advisers on how government works, and on major policy decisions.

How the PM and his cabinet secretary work together makes a big difference to the cabinet secretary’s influence.

They are also in charge of ensuring the civil service acts to deliver key manifesto commitments and policies, brokering decisions between ministers and departments and making sure they are followed through.

Not all cabinet secretaries are head of the civil service, but the last few have been.

This involves them managing civil servants, convening meetings of the departmental permanent secretaries, leading reform and improvement of the civil service and representing the civil service in parliament and in the media.

Most cabinet secretaries are appointed by the prime minister of the day, sometimes on the recommendation of the outgoing cabinet secretary.

After Mark Sedwill stood down in 2020 there was a formal competitive process to replace him, however Simon Case reportedly did not apply and was asked to take on the job by Boris Johnson.

Candidates to replace Mr Case were asked for a CV and a cover letter before being interviewed by a panel of former cabinet secretaries, permanent secretaries, head of the Ministry of Defence and the civil service commissioner.

Sir Keir then had the final say to appoint the role, which was advertised with a salary of about £200,000.

Sir Chris said he was “delighted” to be appointed to the “privileged role of leading our talented civil service”.

“The government has set a clear mandate – an ambitious agenda with working people at its heart. That will require each and every one of us to embrace the change agenda in how the British state operates,” he added.

“So I look forward to working with leaders across government, to ensure that the civil service has the skills they need to deliver across the breadth of the country.”

Professor Sir Chris Whitty, chief medical officer, will head up the Department for Health while a new permanent secretary is appointed.

Sir Chris Wormald beat other senior current and former civil servants to the job, advertised with a £200,000 salary.

The other contenders were: Sir Olly Robbins, a former director-general of the civil service who was involved in Brexit talks, Dame Antonia Romeo, permanent secretary at the Ministry of Justice, and Tamara Finkelstein, permanent secretary at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Some within Whitehall believe Sir Chris was a “safe choice” compared with the other options.

He steps into the shoes of Mr Case, 45, who was appointed in September 2020 and served four different prime ministers.

In an email to the civil service announcing his resignation in September, Mr Case said: “As many of you know, I have been undergoing medical treatment for a neurological condition over the last 18 months and, whilst the spirit remains willing, the body is not.

“It is a shame that I feel I have to spell this out, but my decision is solely to do with my health and nothing to do with anything else.”

Mr Case announced his resignation following a difficult few weeks for Downing Street during which damaging leaks and internal rows took over the narrative, with Sir Keir growing increasingly frustrated.

The top civil servant was said to have had a tense relationship with Sue Gray, Sir Keir’s former chief of staff who stepped down in October following accusations from some Labour figures about the party’s handling of ministers taking freebies.

Politics

Trump tariffs squeeze already struggling Bitcoin miners — Braiins exec

Published

5 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

5 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

6 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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