Lithuania—the seaside country—has fined Payeer, a crypto company, €9.3 million ($10.1 million) for financial sanctions and money laundering violations involving its Russian clientele. According to Bloomberg, the Financial Crimes Investigation Service (FNTT) under the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Lithuania fined the Payeer, which is registered in Lithuania.
Since the geopolitical war began between Russia and Ukraine, many countries in Europe and the West imposed sanctions on Russia for crimes of war. Lithuania was one of them, considering it has been a member of NATO since 2004.
During this period, many centralized crypto exchanges (CEX) like Binance had to cancel all crypto operations in Russia and cancel Russian clients. Many of these clients switched to subsidiaries and CEXs in their country.
Today’s report shows that Payeer remained operational to Russians despite these sanctions. According to the report, Payeer enabled Russians “to carry out transactions in Russian rubles by transferring them from European Union-sanctioned Russian banks.”
FNTT discovered that Payeer has been violating international sanctions laws for close to two years. During this period, Payeer” had at least 213,000 customers, and its revenue stood at more than 164 million euros.
Financial Crimes Investigation Service adds that Russian citizens and legal companies were “given the opportunity to receive cryptocurrency wallet, account management or storage services.”
The fines are distributed in a way 8.23 million Euros account for violating international sanctions while “Another fine amounting to more than 1.06 million. EUR, allocated…. for violations of the Law on the Prevention of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing (PPTFPĮ).”
FNTT adds that the company violated not only the formal but also the essential requirements of the law and regulations. According to reports, Payeer had wrong KYC data, and in other instances, it was not verified “in order not to lose a significant part of the income.”
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