The Department of Justice has filed charges against virtual currency exchange KuCoin and its two founders for violating anti-money laundering laws.
The Department of Justice on Tuesday announced an indictment against KuCoin and its founders, Chun Gan and Ke Tang, charging them with operating an unauthorized money transfer business and violating the Bank Secrecy Act. The department said the exchange did not maintain an adequate anti-money laundering program, did not have “reasonable procedures” in place to verify the identity of its customers, and did not file suspicious activity reports. It is said that it is not.
According to the indictment, KuCoin intentionally circumvented U.S. AML and KYC regulations by “falsely representing that it had no customers in the United States, when in fact it had a substantial customer base in the United States.” It is said that it did. The government alleges that KuCoin allowed its platform to be used to launder more than $9 billion.
“In fact, KuCoin has leveraged its vast US customer base to become one of the world's largest crypto derivatives and spot exchanges with billions of dollars of daily trading and trillions of dollars in annual trading volume. It has been.” Damien Williams, United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said: statement. ”However, financial institutions like KuCoin that take advantage of the unique opportunities available in the US must also comply with US laws to identify and eliminate criminal and corrupt financing schemes. KuCoin is said to have deliberately chosen not to do so. ”
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission also filed a parallel civil lawsuit against KuCoin on Tuesday, according to the Department of Justice.
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