Binance Fined $4.3M by Canadian Financial Regulator for ‘Administrative Violations’
FINTRAC said Binance failed to register as a foreign money services business and neglected to report nearly 6,000 transactions over $10,000.
Updated May 9, 2024, 4:12 p.m. Published May 9, 2024, 4:10 p.m.
- Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada said the exchange had committed two “administrative violations” of financial regulations.
- The fine compares with the $4.3 billion the crypto exchange agreed to pay U.S. authorities.
Canadian regulators hit Binance with a C$6 million ($4.3 million) fine on Tuesday, alleging the crypto exchange committed two separate “administrative violations” of the country’s financial regulations.
In a Thursday press release, the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC), the country's financial intelligence unit and top financial regulator, said Binance failed to register as a foreign money services business despite being provided with “several opportunities” to do so.
FINTRAC also said that, between June 1, 2021 and July 19, 2023 Binance failed to report 5,902 crypto transactions bigger than $10,000 and their attached know-your-customer (KYC) information to the regulator. The agency discovered the violations using blockchain explorer tools.
The fine comes just six months after Binance agreed to pay U.S. regulators a $4.3 billion fine for violating U.S. anti-money laundering laws, and a week after former Binance CEO and co-founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao was sentenced to four months in U.S. prison for failing to set up an adequate KYC/anti-money laundering (AML) program at the exchange.
Binance is also battling financial regulators in Nigeria, where it has been accused of taking Nigerian naira and charged with money laundering and tax evasion. An American Binance executive, Tigran Gambaryan, the head of financial compliance for the exchange, was taken into custody in February and charged with the same crimes.
Earlier this week, Binance CEO Richard Teng called on the Nigerian government to release Gambaryan, and wrote in a blog post that, back in January before Gambaryan’s arrest, “unknown persons” had requested a “significant payment in cryptocurrency” to make the charges go away. The requested bribe was reported by the New York Times to be $150 million.
Cheyenne Ligon
On the news team at CoinDesk, Cheyenne focuses on crypto regulation and crime. Cheyenne is originally from Houston, Texas. She studied political science at Tulane University in Louisiana. In December 2021, she graduated from CUNY's Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, where she focused on business and economics reporting. She has no significant crypto holdings.
