The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced it has reached an agreement with BitPay to pay $507,375 fine to settle potential civil liability for 2,102 sanction violations.
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The OFAC claims BitPay failed to restrict access to its services to persons who have been located in the Crimea region of Ukraine, Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Sudan, and Syria even though it had location information on these persons, including IP addresses and other location data.
The watchdog believes BitPay’s failure to ban the persons allowed them to engage in $129,000 worth of crypto transactions.
"The settlement amount reflects OFAC’s determination that BitPay's apparent violations were not voluntarily self-disclosed and were non-egregious," the regulator said.
This is not the first time when the US government agency fines a crypto-related company for violations of multiple sanctions programs. In December 2020, BitGo, a cryptocurrency custodian, also agreed to pay $98,830 to settle violations of multiple sanctions programs.
The OFAC said BitGo also had all the information on the clients from the sanctioned regions, but did not take any measures to restrict access to the service.
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