Due to Binance’s failure to comply with Dutch’s anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing law owes the Dutch central bank €3.3 million.
Dutch central bank, De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB), announced Monday that they fined the world’s largest crypto exchange for operating in the Netherlands without an appropriate license. August 2021 had the bank warning consumers that the Dutch authorities had not approved Binance as a trading platform.
The DNB said in a statement that the fine was imposed in April after they investigated Binance’s operations in the Netherlands from May 2020 to December 2021 and discovered some irregularities that qualified for a third category fine. The basic third-category fine in the Netherlands is €2 million.
For Binance, the fine rose to €3.3 million due to the seriousness and consistency of the violations. The DNB stated that Binance served many customers in the Netherlands, enjoying a competitive advantage as it has not paid levies or covered the cost of supervision to DNB.
DNB also stated that Binance has applied for the necessary regulations, making the fine 700,000 short of the maximum amount. They said, “Binance has been relatively transparent about its business operations throughout the process.” The Dutch central bank slashed the initial fine by 5% as compensation.
This penalty dealt a heavy blow to Binance after they had recorded an increase in recent months that caused it to widen its horizons to France, UAE, and Puerto Rico.
Although Binance objected to the fine on June 2, the objection might not be unsuccessful.
Sadly, this is happening after Binance celebrated its 5th anniversary.