Thomas Fuller | SOPA Images | lightrocket | Getty Images
The U.S. Department of Justice said the operator of the OKX cryptocurrency exchange pleaded guilty Monday to violating U.S. anti-money laundering laws and would pay nearly $505 million in fines and forfeiture fees.
Aux Cayes Fintech Co, a Seychelles-based entity pleads guilty to one offense of operating an unlicensed currency transfer business.
It pleaded at a hearing of U.S. District Court Judge Katherine Polk Failla in Manhattan, who forcibly made the sentence.
OKX is the fourth-tier cryptocurrency spot exchange in the world based on liquidity, liquidity, trading volume and confidence in the legitimacy of reported trading volumes, according to CoinMarketCap. Binance, Bybit and Coinbase rank higher.
Prosecutors said from 2018 to early 2024, OKX violated its own policy, opposing Americans to use its platform and was used to promote more than $5 billion in suspicious transactions and criminal gains.
Prosecutors said OKX has allowed our clients to conduct over $1 trillion in overall transactions, generating hundreds of millions of dollars in fees and profits, and sometimes encouraging customers to bypass the train ban.
An employee allegedly told the client that it is located in the United Arab Emirates and used random numbers to identify it.
Prosecutors said OKX was also promoted in the U.S., including sponsoring the Tribeca Film Festival in Manhattan.
The guilty plea includes a fine of $84.4 million, plus a $420.3 million confiscation and requires OKX to hire an external compliance consultant by February 2027, which was hired early last year. OKX has gained credit for working with the investigation.
Aux Cayes Fintech acknowledged in a statement that improper transactions by U.S. customers, attributed it to a “traditional compliance gap.”
It also says that U.S. customers make up only a small part of their overall customer base and are no longer on OKX’s platform.
