Cryptocurrency exchange Poloniex has agreed to pay a settlement of $7.6 million to the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) due to more than 65,000 apparent violations of multiple sanctions programs. OFAC stated that between January 2014 and November 2019, Poloniex allowed users in sanctioned jurisdictions such as Crimea, Cuba, Iran, Sudan, and Syria to conduct digital asset trades, deposits, and withdrawals worth over $15 million.
Although Poloniex made an effort to identify and restrict accounts with a nexus to these jurisdictions, customers located in these areas continued to use Poloniex’s platform to engage in digital asset-related transactions. OFAC noted that Poloniex’s violations were not “voluntarily self-disclosed” nor “egregious.” In 2018, stablecoin issuer Circle acquired Poloniex, and a group of investors, including Tron founder Justin Sun, purchased the firm from Circle in 2019.
