Bitcoin Daily: Zamna Blockchain Travel Verification Firm Raises $5M; Crypto Capital Exec Arrested For Laundering Drug Money

Zamna announced that it has raised a $5 million seed funding round led by LocalGlobe and Oxford Capital.

Seedcamp, the London Co-Investment Fund (LCIF), Telefonica, and a number of angel investors also participated in the round, as well as existing investor IAG (International Airlines Group).

Zamna, previously known as VChain Technology, uses a blockchain to safely share and verify data between airlines and travel authorities to check passenger identities. IAG is now its first commercial client.

“With passenger numbers expected to double in the next 20 years, new technology-driven solutions are the only way airlines, airports and governments will be able to cope. We’re delighted to be working with the Zamna team and believe they can play a key role in addressing these challenges,” Remus Brett, partner at LocalGlobe, said, according to reports.

In other news, an executive of the Panamanian payment processing firm Crypto Capital has been arrested in Poland for allegedly laundering drug money for an international crime group. Polish media identified the suspect as Ivan Manuel Molina Lee, president of Crypto Capital, who was deported last week to Poland from Greece.

It has also been revealed that Crypto Capital processed certain funds for and on behalf of Bitfinex for several years. “Bitfinex is the victim of a fraud and is making its position clear to the relevant authorities, including those in Poland and the United States,” Stuart Hoegner, general counsel to Bitfinex, said in a statement to Bloomberg. “We cannot speak about Crypto Capital’s other clients, but any suggestion that Crypto Capital laundered drug proceeds or any other illicit funds at the behest of Bitfinex or its customers is categorically false.”

Japan and South Korea have been pressuring exchanges to delist privacy-focused crypto assets — including Monero, Zcash and Dash — with worries that it could expand into other markets in Asia.

In the meantime, blockchain analytics firm CipherTrace is working on technologies to better understand the structure of privacy-focused coins, as well as trace transactions. A spokesperson for CipherTrace told Cointelegraph that the company expects to see some progress by 2020.

And China’s President Xi Jinping wants his country to accelerate its adoption of blockchain technologies.

“We must take blockchain as an important breakthrough for independent innovation of core technologies, clarify the main directions, increase investment, focus on a number of key technologies, and accelerate the development of blockchain and industrial innovation,” he said, according to Cointelegraph.