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Cryptocurrency exchange Binance fined C$6 million ($4.3 million) by Canadian financial regulator FINTRAC for ‘administrative violations’
Canadian regulators hit Binance with a C$6 million ($4.3 million) fine on Tuesday. presumed the cryptocurrency exchange has committed two separate “administrative violations” of the country’s financial regulations.
In a Thursday Press releasethe Financial Transaction and Reporting Analysis Center of Canada (FINTRAC), the country’s financial intelligence unit and main financial regulator, said Binance failed to register as a foreign money services business despite being provided with ” different opportunities” to do so.
FINTRAC further said that, between June 1, 2021 and July 19, 2023, Binance failed to report 5,902 crypto transactions over $10,000 and related know-your-customer (KYC) information to the regulator. The agency discovered the breaches using blockchain explorer tools.
Binance is also battling financial regulators in Nigeria, where it has been accused of taking the Nigerian naira and accused of money laundering and tax evasion. An American Binance executive, Tigran Gambaryan, the exchange’s financial compliance officer, was arrested in February and charged with the same crimes.
Earlier this week, Binance CEO Richard Teng called on the Nigerian government to release Gambaryan he wrote in a blog post that, in the January before Gambaryan’s arrest, “unknown persons” had demanded a “significant payment in cryptocurrency” to have the charges dropped. The bribe requested was reported by the New York Times be 150 million dollars.