Crypto exchange Poloniex ordered to pay $7.5 million in fines for violating sanctions against Crimea, Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria.
In fact, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has announced that crypto exchange Poloniex has agreed to pay more than $7.5 million in fines for violating sanctions against Crimea, Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria.
Between 2014 and 2019, Poloniex allowed customers apparently located in sanctioned jurisdictions to engage in online transactions related to digital assets – consisting of trades, deposits and withdrawals – with a combined value of more than $15 million,” the regulator said, noting that the company was aware of the violations.
Poloniex customers in these sanctioned regions were able to generate more than $15 million in crypto asset volume between 2014 and 2019, U.S. authorities said in their announcement.
In November 2022, the crypto exchange Kraken was also forced to pay a fine of $362,000 for violating US sanctions against Iran, click here to read our article.
For the record, founded in 2014, Poloniex was acquired by Circle in 2018 and then was eventually very quickly acquired in 2019 by Polo Digital Assets, an entity led by controversial crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun.
In addition to OFAC, Poloniex also had to face the US regulator SEC, which fined the crypto trading platform $10 million in 2021 for operating an unregistered crypto exchange.
