Canada’s Financial Regulator Fines Binance Holdings $4,300,000 Over Alleged Anti-Money Laundering Failures: Report

Regulators in Canada have reportedly fined Binance millions of dollars after the crypto exchange allegedly failed to comply with anti-money laundering and terrorist financing laws.

According to a new report by Reuters, The Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC) is penalizing the world’s largest crypto exchange platform by volume after it failed to register as a foreign money services business.

FINTRAC says it fined Binance $4.38 million after it failed to report receiving crypto assets worth C$10,000 ($7,310) or more on 5,902 separate instances between June 1st, 2021 and July 19th, 2023.

Binance decided to leave Canada in May of last year after it said it had issues with the country’s regulations on investor limits and stablecoins.

At the time, Binance said Canada’s new regulations rendered its market “no longer tenable.”

“Unfortunately, new guidance related to stablecoins and investor limits provided to crypto exchanges makes the Canada market no longer tenable for Binance at this time.

We put off this decision as long as we could to explore other reasonable avenues to protect our Canadian users, but it has become apparent that there are none.”

However, Binance said that it would consider returning to Canada  the country establishes proper regulations. Also last year, Changpeng Zhao, the Canadian chief executive of Binance, pleaded guilty in a US court to violating anti-money laundering laws.

Zhao was sentenced to four months in prison and Binance was slapped with a massive $4.3 billion penalty.

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