The U.S. Treasury Department announced this week that cryptocurrency exchange Bittrex Inc was fined $53 million to settle “apparent violations” of U.S. sanctions on certain countries and anti-money laundering laws. The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) fined Bittrex $24 million while the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) asked for $29 million.
OFAC suggested that Bittrex did not take action to prevent people from using its platform from sanctioned regions of the world, including Ukraine’s Crimea region, Cuba, Iran, Sudan, and Syria, between March 2014 and December 2017. Meanwhile, FinCEN found in its assessment that Bittrex had not managed to implement an effective anti-money laundering program between February 2014 and December 2018.
FinCEN found that “Bittrex’s AML program failed to appropriately address the risks associated with the products and services it offered, including anonymity-enhanced cryptocurrencies.”
As cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, grow in popularity worldwide, governments are only now beginning to establish regulations for the sector. Trading in digital currencies has gone largely unregulated across several parts of the world in recent years and crypto firms are now having to be more transparent about their operations in the U.S. and other countries with new regulations.
Bittrex said in an email statement to the media outlet Reuters that it has now fully resolved the issue with OFAC and FinCEN on “mutually agreeable terms”.
