Ireland fines Coinbase Europe EUR 21 million over AML breaches
The Central Bank of Ireland (CBI) has imposed a fine of EUR 21.5 million on Coinbase Europe for serious violations of anti-money-laundering (AML) and counter-terrorist-financing (CTF) regulations. This marks the first enforcement action of its kind against a crypto-asset service provider in Ireland.
The regulator stated that between April 2021 and March 2023, Coinbase Europe failed to monitor over 30 million transactions with a total value of approximately EUR 176 billion. The issue arose from coding errors in the company’s monitoring systems, leaving a significant portion of its transactions unexamined for suspicious activities.
As the CBI reported, nearly 31% of Coinbase Europe’s total transaction volume during that period went unmonitored. When the company later re-screened those transactions, around EUR 13 million worth were flagged as potentially suspicious.
“The unscreened transactions showed possible links to money-laundering, fraud, child sexual exploitation, and other major crimes,” the regulator noted.
Coinbase attributed the lapses to technical faults in its compliance software and expressed its commitment to strengthening oversight to prevent such failures in the future.
Summary
Coinbase Europe was fined EUR 21.5 million by Ireland’s central bank after failing to properly monitor over EUR 176 billion in crypto transactions due to coding errors in its AML systems.