Coinbase has been fined US$3.5 million (approximately Rs.30 million) in the Netherlands. The Central Bank of the Netherlands has served the crypto exchange with a legal notice for offering crypto services in the Netherlands without completing the necessary procedures including registration. In May 2020, the Netherlands mandated crypto-related companies to register as official money transmitters. The country aims to curb the misuse of cryptocurrencies for money laundering.
The fine levied coin base from De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) is a notch above the base amount of US$2 million (about Rs.16 billion) that can be spent under the law. According to Bitcoin.com reportthe amount of the contractual penalty was determined according to the “seriousness and degree of guilt of the violation”.
The Dutch central bank has claimed that Coinbase operated without registration in the country for almost two years between November 2020 and August 2022.
During this period, according to the bank, Coinbase has not been able to report details of suspicious transactions to the authorities. Nefarious actors may have exploited this window to facilitate illicit cross-border payments that would have gone undetected.
the crypto exchange can appeal against the DNB decision until March.
The report went on to say that the exchange disagreed with the decision and was considering an appeal.
Coinbase received an operational registration in the Netherlands last September.
Coinbase in December said It saw a 66 percent increase in law enforcement requests over the year. These inquiries from the Netherlands had increased by 163 percent, Coinbase announced at the time.
The analytics company Triple-A estimates that the Netherlands hosted over 520,000 crypto holders as of 2021.
Amid the growing number of crypto investors, the nation is taking a tough approach to enforcing anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism finance law.
Coinbase rival binance also confronted a similar situation in the Netherlands for the same reasons last year.
