Poloniex Will Pay $7.6M in Settlement with OFAC

Tron founder Justin Sun acquired in 2019 the Poloniex crypto exchange; however, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has determined that the platform had conducted 66,000 transactions worth more than $15.3 million in “prohibited jurisdictions” (Crimea, Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria) between 2014 and 2019.

As a result, Poloniex agreed to pay $7.6 million for the violations, which were not “voluntarily disclosed” but were not “egregious.”

By the end of 2017, the exchange had implemented restrictions which began to reduce the amount of violations.

In 2018, Circle, co-issuer of the USDC stablecoin, bought the platform for an estimated $400 million. Later, Justin Sun acquired part of it.

On June 9, 2021, the SEC imposed a $10 million fine on Poloniex, alleging that they had offered unregistered securities in the form of digital tokens to customers between July 2017 and November 2019.