How Much Crypto Exchange Poloniex Had To Shell Out To U.S. Regulatory Agency For 65,942 Sanctions Violations

Cryptocurrency exchange Poloniex LLC agreed to pay a $7.6 million settlement to resolve charges of alleged sanctions violations.

What Happened: According to the U.S. Department of Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), Poloniex engaged in 65,942 apparent violations of multiple sanctions programs between January 2014 and November 2019.

This included transactions by customers in sanctioned jurisdictions, including Cuba, Iran, Syria, Sudan and Crimea.

OFAC stated Poloniex allowed customers in these countries to engage in online digital asset-related transactions despite having reason to know their location based on both Know Your Customer information and internet protocol address data.

Poloniex was also accused of not implementing adequate sanctions controls related to customers in Crimea until August 2017.

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The exchange was acquired by Circle Internet Financial USDC/USD in February 2018, which implemented additional internal sanctions compliance controls.

However, some apparent violations, primarily related to a small number of accounts opened by persons then located in Crimea, continued in 2018 and 2019.

Poloniex sold its trading platform to a third party in November 2019 and currently has no business operations or employees.

The settlement amount reflects OFAC's determination that Poloniex's apparent violations were not voluntarily self-disclosed and were not egregious.

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