Kucoin is appealing a Canadian application action in which the exchange was accused of not registering as a money service business and not maintaining the appropriate defenses against money laundering, a case that led to a fine of more than $ 19 million ($ 14 million in the United States).
That unusually large penalty of the Financial Transactions Analysis and Reports Center (FINTRAC) was imposed after discovering that Global Limited Peken, based in Seychelles, operating as Kucoin, did not report large cryptographic transactions and did not mark suspicious transactions that may have involved money laundering or terrorist financing, the agency said on Thursday.
The regulator said that Kucoin did not report large transactions on almost 3,000 occasions from 2021 to 2024 and in 33 cases “did not report financial transactions where there were reasonable reasons to suspect that the transactions were related to the commission or the attempt of the commission of a money laundering or a financing of terrorist activities.”
Kucoin said he presented an appeal before the Federal Court of Canada “for substantive and procedural reasons.”
“While Kucoin respects the decision -making process and remains committed to compliance and regulatory transparency, he does not agree with the finding that Kucoin is a foreign money services business and the sanction imposed, which Kucoin argues that it is excessive and punitive of nature,” said the company in a Thursday statement.
This Fintrac penalty represents most of the agency’s fines in the last year, he said, having imposed fines 23 times for a total of $ 25 million in that period. It was said that Kucoin’s alleged violations were serious and, in the event that they did not inform suspicious transactions, “severe.”
Kucoin has been penalized in several jurisdictions in similar cases, including one of the Ontario Securities Commission in 2023. In the United States, the company was established with the Department of Justice earlier this year, paying almost $ 300 million, declaring himself guilty of a position of operations without license and agreed to keep out of the country.
Read more: South Korea plans sanctions against Kucoin, others: report
