American company Poloniex will pay $7.6 million to resolve a case of alleged sanctions violations against governments imposed by the United States, including Cuba.According to an announcement from the US Treasury’s Office of Asset Control (OFAC).
according to Posted a note this Mondaybetween January 2014 and November 2019, Poloniex allowed customers ostensibly located in sanctioned jurisdictions, including Cuba, Iran, Sudan, Crimea and Syria, to conduct transactions worth a combined $15.3 million.
Although Poloniex made efforts to identify and restrict accounts with connections in these countries, clients located there continued to use the platform for digital activities.. The maximum fine the company faced was $99.2 million, but the Treasury Department estimated it at $7.6 million because the alleged violations were not “egregious.”
The US Treasury stressed that Poloniex had the means to know that the users in question were in sanctioned jurisdictions, through physical address and IP address information. In addition, the memo indicated that although the company implemented the sanctions compliance program, it did not apply it consistently. In all, the US company committed a total of 65,942 violations, according to OFAC.
Poloniex is a cryptocurrency trading platform, currently based in Seychelles. It is one of the most popular brokers due to its long history, as it was founded in 2014. It provides access to loans, traditional trading, margin trading, or buying/selling bitcoin and other crypto assets.
Less than a month ago, another $1 million fine for violating US sanctions became known. Microsoft will pay more than three million dollars To filter more than 1300 Violations of US sanctions against Cuba, Iran, Syria and Russiaaccording to a US Treasury document he cited The Wall Street Journal.
According to the report, The tech giant has admitted that it committed clear violations of the regulation to control Cuban assetsand Iranian transactions and sanctions, Syrian sanctions regulations, and Russia-related sanctions, the OFAC document noted.
