Kucoin has pledged to guilty of a number of operations of an unlicensed money sending business and agreed to pay penalties of $ 297 million, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York said on a release on Tuesday.
“Kucoin avoids implementing the necessary anti-money laundering policies designed to identify criminal actors and prevent illicit transactions,” US lawyer Danielle R. Sassoon said in a statement.
“Kucoin has been used to facilitate billions of dollars worth of weakening transactions and to ship potential criminal income, including proceeds from Darknet and malware markets, ransomware, and schemes of fraud, ”the statement added.
As part of the offense, Kucoin agreed to appear in the US market for atleast two years and two of the founders of the exchange, Chun “Michael” Gan and Ke “Eric” Tang, also leaving the company.
Kucoin served approximately 1.5 million registered users located in the US, and gained at least $ 184.5 million in fees from registered US users, the release said.
The release note that Kucoin employees are openly promoted that the exchange has no Know-Your-Customer (KYC) program. It was only in August 2023 that Kucoin adopted a KYC process, but it was not implemented by existing customers.
Gan and Tang, the founders of the exchange, have agreed to lose approximately $ 2.7 million in funds generated as a result of Kucoin’s operations in the US
In a Press release from KucoinGan said he had come down from the exchange to ensure its ongoing success and had no intention of violating any US or international law.
KCS, Kucoin’s exchange token, reached 10% on-day, according to Coingecko dataHowever the token is thinly exchanged.
