{"id":20692,"date":"2025-01-28T11:29:09","date_gmt":"2025-01-28T09:29:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/kucoin-fined-300-million-for-unlicensed-operations\/"},"modified":"2025-01-28T11:29:09","modified_gmt":"2025-01-28T09:29:09","slug":"kucoin-fined-300-million-for-unlicensed-operations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/kucoin-fined-300-million-for-unlicensed-operations\/","title":{"rendered":"KuCoin Fined $300 Million for Unlicensed Operations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The cryptocurrency exchange KuCoin has admitted to conducting unlicensed money transmission business in the United States and has agreed to pay fines and compensations amounting to nearly $300 million.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">KuCoin pleads guilty to unlicensed money transmission charge and agrees to pay penalties totaling nearly $300 million<a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/0Unaqbvro6\">https:\/\/t.co\/0Unaqbvro6<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 US Attorney SDNY (@SDNYnews) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/SDNYnews\/status\/1884003567339733156?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">January 27, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>In March 2024, prosecutors <a href=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/news\/us-accuses-kucoin-of-laundering-9-billion\">filed charges<\/a> against the platform&#8217;s managing company, Peken Global Ltd, registered in the Seychelles, and its two co-founders. The allegations concerned the lack of effective <span data-descr=\"know your customer\" class=\"old_tooltip\">KYC<\/span>\/<span data-descr=\"anti-money laundering\" class=\"old_tooltip\">AML<\/span> programs and registration with the <span data-descr=\"Financial Crimes Enforcement Network under the US Treasury\" class=\"old_tooltip\">FinCEN<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>According to court documents, KuCoin will pay a fine of $112.9 million and reimburse $184.5 million earned from servicing US clients.<\/p>\n<p>For the exchange&#8217;s co-founders, Chun (Michael) Gan and Ke (Eric) Tang, financial penalties amounted to $2.7 million each. Their further criminal prosecution has been suspended for two years.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>\u201cFor years, KuCoin avoided implementing the required anti-money laundering policies [\u2026]. As a result, the exchange was used to facilitate suspicious transfers of billions of dollars and to transmit potentially illicit funds, including proceeds from darknet markets, malware, ransomware, and fraud schemes. Today&#8217;s guilty plea and penalties demonstrate the cost of non-compliance with these requirements,\u201d the press release states.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>In January, the operator of the cryptocurrency derivatives exchange BitMEX, HDR Global Trading Limited, agreed to pay a fine <a href=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/news\/us-justice-department-fines-bitmex-100m-for-bank-secrecy-act-breaches\">of $100 million<\/a> following a lawsuit by the US Department of Justice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The cryptocurrency exchange KuCoin has admitted to conducting unlicensed money transmission business in the United States and has agreed to pay fines and compensations amounting to nearly $300 million. KuCoin pleads guilty to unlicensed money transmission charge and agrees to pay penalties totaling nearly $300 millionhttps:\/\/t.co\/0Unaqbvro6 \u2014 US Attorney SDNY (@SDNYnews) January 27, 2025 In [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20691,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"select":"","news_style_id":"","cryptorium_level":"","_short_excerpt_text":"","creation_source":"","_metatest_mainpost_news_update":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1166,1304,1411,26],"class_list":["post-20692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-centralized-exchanges-cex","tag-fines","tag-kucoin","tag-usa"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"views":"28","promo_type":"","layout_type":"","short_excerpt":"","is_update":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}