OKX Fined $1.2M by Malta for Breaching Money Laundering Rules

The institution was expected to measure the quality of risks prevalent successful the services it was offering, the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit said successful a notice.

Apr 4, 2025, 1:24 p.m.

OKX's Europe company—also known arsenic OKCoin Europe, a subsidiary of crypto speech OKX—was fined 1.05 cardinal euros ($1.2 million) by Malta's fiscal watchdog connected Thursday for breaching the country's wealth laundering rules.

The Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit (FIAU) said the institution failed to measure the wealth laundering and financing of coercion risks emanating from the products it offers and had violated parts of the country's Prevention of Money Laundering and Financing of Terrorism Regulations.

"Regulatory compliance is simply a apical precedence for OKX, and we stay committed to gathering and exceeding planetary regulatory standards," OKX said successful a statement.

The institution besides said it had addressed gaps identified successful its compliance model pursuing the authority's 2023 review. In the caller notice, FIAU besides commended the institution connected making important improvements implicit the past 18 months.

OKX secured the coveted Markets successful Crypto Assets licence (MiCA) from Malta earlier this year, which volition alteration it to connection crypto services crossed the European Union.

"The institution was expected to measure the quality of risks prevalent successful the services it was offering," the authorization said in its notice.

FIAU said the speech should measure risks tied to the usage of stablecoins, mixers that obscure the origins of transactions, privateness coins, tokens designed for anonymity, and tokens connected decentralized exchanges.

OKX precocious temporarily suspended its decentralized speech aggregator pursuing reports that European regulators had been looking astatine however it had been utilized to launder funds from a recent hack of the Bybit exchange.

Bloomberg archetypal reported the story.

Camomile Shumba

Camomile Shumba is simply a CoinDesk regulatory newsman based successful the UK. Previously, Shumba interned astatine Business Insider and Bloomberg. Camomile has featured successful Harpers Bazaar, Red, the BBC, Black Ballad, Journalism.co.uk, Cryptopolitan.com and South West Londoner. Shumba studied politics, doctrine and economics arsenic a combined grade astatine the University of East Anglia earlier doing a postgraduate grade successful multimedia journalism. While she did her undergraduate grade she had an award-winning vigor amusement connected making a difference. She does not presently clasp worth successful immoderate integer currencies oregon projects.