According to a press release, Bittrex will be required to pay $29 million as part of a global settlement with the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) for violations of the BSA.
According to a press release, Bittrex will be obliged to pay $29M as part of a worldwide settlement with the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).
The agency investigated the cryptocurrency exchange's activities and discovered that it had failed to develop and implement an effective Anti-Money Laundering (AML) program. As a result, the firm is unable to effectively mitigate the risks associated with its services and products.
Manually reviewing 20k transactions per day
It particularly failed to effectively monitor transactions on its crypto trading platform. Allows only two employees with limited AML training to manually analyse all 20k transactions every day.
Furthermore, Bittrex failed to file any Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) during a three-year period, including on a substantial number of transactions involving OFAC-sanctioned jurisdictions such as Iran, Syria, Cuba, Sudan, and Ukraine.
As FinCEN Acting Director Himamauli Das said, this oversight has far-reaching consequences:
“For years, Bittrex's AML programme and SAR reporting shortcomings exposed the US banking system to threat actors unnecessarily. Bittrex's shortcomings exposed it to high-risk counterparties including sanctioned states, darknet marketplaces, and ransomware attacks.”
Bittrex acknowledges its failures & agrees to pay the fine
According to the Consent Order, the crypto exchange accepted the findings of the inquiry, admitted to deliberately violating the BSA and its implementing regulations, and agreed to pay the fine.
Considering that virtual asset service providers are on notice that they must build strong risk-based compliance systems and satisfy their BSA reporting responsibilities. Das stressed that “if deliberate violations of the BSA are discovered, his agency will not hesitate to take action.”
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