{"id":78127,"date":"2023-05-02T10:31:11","date_gmt":"2023-05-02T07:31:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/?p=78127"},"modified":"2025-09-11T03:11:55","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T00:11:55","slug":"poloniex-to-pay-7-6-million-in-ofac-settlement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/poloniex-to-pay-7-6-million-in-ofac-settlement\/","title":{"rendered":"Poloniex to pay $7.6 million in OFAC settlement"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Poloniex, the cryptocurrency exchange acquired in 2019 by Tron founder Justin Sun, <a href=\"https:\/\/ofac.treasury.gov\/recent-actions\/20230501_33\">agreed<\/a> with <span data-descr=\"Office of Foreign Assets Control of the U.S. Department of the Treasury\" class=\"old_tooltip\">OFAC<\/span> to pay $7.6 million for sanctions violations.<\/p>\n<p>According to the regulator, between 2014 and 2019 the platform conducted more than 66,000 transactions totaling over $15.3 million in &#8216;restricted jurisdictions&#8217; \u2014 Crimea, Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria.<\/p>\n<p>The agency based the settlement on the finding that Poloniex&#8217;s violations were &#8216;not disclosed voluntarily&#8217;, but were not &#8216;egregious&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>According to OFAC&#8217;s investigation, the company possessed <span data-descr=\"Know Your Customer\" class=\"old_tooltip\">KYC<\/span> data and clients&#8217; IP addresses, but did not block sanctioned users.<\/p>\n<p>Nevertheless, the Office acknowledged that by the end of 2017 Poloniex added restrictions that &#8216;began to substantially reduce&#8217; the number of violations.<\/p>\n<p>Circle, the co\u2011issuer of the USDC stablecoin, acquired Poloniex in February 2018 for reportedly $400 million, with plans to grow the business. However, the exchange&#8217;s market share had fallen from a peak of 60% in 2017 to 1%. Later, Justin Sun bought back part of the platform.<\/p>\n<p>On June 9, 2021, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said it had levied $10 million against Poloniex. According to the agency, from July 2017 to November 2019 the company <a href=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/news\/sec-fines-poloniex-crypto-exchange-10-million\">offered unregistered securities<\/a> in the form of digital tokens.<\/p>\n<p>Platform representatives did not admit or deny the charges but agreed to pay the assessed penalty.<\/p>\n<p>In November 2022, Huobi, also owned by Sun, <a href=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/news\/huobi-signs-strategic-partnership-with-poloniex\">established<\/a> strategic partnerships with Poloniex.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Poloniex, the cryptocurrency exchange acquired in 2019 by Tron founder Justin Sun, agreed with OFAC to pay $7.6 million for sanctions violations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":78128,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"select":"1","news_style_id":"1","cryptorium_level":"","_short_excerpt_text":"","creation_source":"","_metatest_mainpost_news_update":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[253,36,26],"class_list":["post-78127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-poloniex","tag-regulation","tag-usa"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"views":"14","promo_type":"1","layout_type":"1","short_excerpt":"","is_update":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78127","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=78127"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78127\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78129,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78127\/revisions\/78129"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}