Bittrex fined over 50 million by OFAC and FinCEN

The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) yesterday announced record settlements with crypto trading platform Bittrex.

OFAC and FinCEN both found that Bittrex had violated sanctions programs on multiple occasions, allowing individuals from Crimea, Cuba, Iran, Sudan, and Syria to make approximately $263,451,600.13 worth of cryptocurrency transactions between March 2014 and December 2017.

As well as this, the crypto exchange also failed to comply with Bank Secrecy Act. FinCEN found that Bittrex failed to implement an effective anti-money laundering (AML) program and the exchange had not filed a suspicious activity report in over three years.

Bittrex was fined $24 million and $29 million, by OFAC and FinCEN respectively. This represents the largest fine imposed on a cryptocurrency business to date.

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Andrea Gacki, Director of Enforcement at OFAC said that “Virtual currency exchanges operating worldwide should understand both who—and where—their customers are. OFAC will continue to hold accountable firms, in the virtual currency industry and elsewhere, whose failure to implement appropriate controls leads to sanctions violations.”