US Treasury fines Bitcoin exchange Bittrex $24M for violating sanctions
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The US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) fined bitcoin exchange Bittrex for failing to comply with sanctions on Russia, Iran, Sudan and Syria. This is stated in a post on website US Treasury.
OFAC found that Bittrex did not stop virtual currency transactions for users in Crimea, Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria between March 2014 and December 2017. The amount of these transfers is estimated at $263 million.
The exchange is registered in Bellevue, Washington. In accordance with US sanctions against Russia, US legal entities are not allowed to enter into transactions with Russian companies or individuals. OFAC director Andrea Gacchi said: “Virtual currency exchanges operating around the world need to understand who their customers are and where they are.”
From the Ministry of Finance’s report, it follows that the bitcoin exchange could track the jurisdiction of customers using the Internet protocol and the address that users provide during registration. However, during transactions, Bittrex did not check the jurisdiction of users for an unspecified reason.
Bittrex is in 76th place in terms of trading volume ($15.2 million per day) in the ranking of cryptocurrency exchanges CoinGecko. In February 2021, OFAC fined the BitPay processing service $500,000 for transactions involving users from Crimea, North Korea, and Iran.
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