Kraken settles with U.S. Treasury after violating Iran Sanctions

Hey Peeps!

The U.S. based crypto exchange, Kraken, has settled with the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), and agreed to pay $362,158.70 for violating economic sanctions against Iran. 

As part of the settlement, Kraken will also invest $100k into "sanction compliance controls".

The OFAC began an investigation into Kraken over suspected violations back in July of this year. 

It appears that Kraken allowed users to make transactions on their platform, despite being in the sanctioned country of Iran. 

During the time period of October 2015 to June 2019, Kraken processed 826 transactions for $1,680,577.10 on behalf of users who were located in Iran.

"Due to Kraken’s failure to timely implement appropriate geolocation tools, including an automated internet protocol (IP) address blocking system, Kraken exported services to users who appeared to be in Iran when they engaged in virtual currency transactions on Kraken’s platform" - The Department of the Treasury

Here is the official document from the Treasury Department announcing the settlement with Kraken:

https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/126/20221128_kraken.pdf

This isn't the first time Kraken has gotten into hot water with Government agencies.

Last year, Kraken was ordered, by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), to pay $1.25 million for "illegally offering margined retail commodity transactions in digital assets".

This doesn't seem like huge news to me during this insane November, but it is important to keep an eye on this stuff.

Hopefully, Kraken steers clear of these avoidable situations in the future. 

What are your thoughts on this news?

See ya!

:)