(Reuters) – The U.S. Treasury Department said on Tuesday that cryptocurrency exchange Bittrex Inc was fined about $53 million to settle “apparent violations” of U.S. sanctions on certain countries and anti-money laundering laws.
The fines of more than $24 million and $29 million were announced by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), respectively.
The OFAC alleged that Bittrex failed to prevent people located in the sanctioned jurisdictions of Ukraine’s Crimea region, Cuba, Iran, Sudan, and Syria from using its platform between March 2014 and December 2017.
The FinCEN said its investigation found that from February 2014 through December 2018, Bittrex failed to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program.
“Bittrex’s AML program failed to appropriately address the risks associated with the products and services it offered, including anonymity-enhanced cryptocurrencies,” it added.
Cryptocurrencies and other digital assets have soared in popularity over recent years and are getting increasingly intertwined with the regulated financial system, saddling policymakers with monitoring risks in a largely unregulated sector.
Bittrex did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the fines.
(Reporting by Manya Saini in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D’Silva)
