- The exchange continued to provide services to customers from the sub-sanctioned jurisdictions
- The list of such includes temporarily occupied Crimea
- The company “settled,” admitted guilt and will pay a fine
Foreign Assets Control Authority (OFAC) published a settlement order with Poloniex on May 1.
The exchange struck a deal with the authorities and will pay a fine of $7.59 million for violating sanctions.
Reminder, the platform has come under scrutiny by OFAC for providing services in several countries to circumvent the ban.
These include Syria, Sudan, Iran, Cuba, and the Russian Federation (temporarily occupied Crimea).
The charge covers the period from January 2014 to November 2019. We are talking about at least 66,000. transactions totaling $15 million.
The sanctions compliance program appeared on the platform back in 2015, but was not properly enforced.
As a result, customers from the mentioned countries, who were registered on the platform, continued to use the services of the exchange.
This amount of the fine is dictated by the fact that the company’s violation “was not egregious.. But Poloniex did not voluntarily report the precedent.
“Although the exchange has made efforts to track and block accounts from sanctioned countries, some customers from those jurisdictions have continued to use its services,” the ruling said.
Poloniex is owned by a consortium, one of whose members is Tron. She is also the subject of another U.S. investigation related to the offer of tokens TRX and BTT.
Reminder, Justin Sun, founder of Tron, called the lawsuit from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is immaterial.
He nominally confirmed his willingness to cooperate with the authorities, but noted that their policies were flawed.