- The exchange continued to provide services to clients from sub-sanctioned jurisdictions
- The list of those includes the temporarily occupied Crimea.
- The company “went to the world”, pleaded guilty and will pay a fine
Yesterday, May 1, on the website of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) was published agreement decree with Poloniex. The exchange made a deal with the authorities and will pay a fine of $7.59 million for violating sanctions.
Recall that the platform came under close attention of OFAC for providing services in a number of countries in circumvention of the ban. In particular, we are talking about 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 thousand transactions for a total of $15 million.
At the same time, the sanctions compliance program appeared on the platform in 2015, but was not implemented accordingly. As a result, clients 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 violation of the company “was not egregious.” But at the same time, Poloniex did not voluntarily report the precedent.
“While the exchange has made efforts to track and block accounts from sanctioned countries, some clients from these jurisdictions have continued to use its services” — stated in the ruling.
Poloniex is owned by a consortium of which Tron is a member. She is also a defendant in another investigation in the United States related to the offer of TRX and BTT tokens.
Recall that Justin Sun, the founder of Tron, called the lawsuit from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) insignificant. He nominally confirmed his readiness to cooperate with the authorities, but noted that their policy was wrong.