Coinbase settles $24.7M fine in Ireland over transaction monitoring failures

Coinbase said it has enhanced oversight and compliance testing after coding errors led to gaps in transaction monitoring between 2021 and 2022.

Coinbase Europe Limited, the European affiliate of US crypto exchange Coinbase, has reached a 21.5 million euro ($24.7 million) settlement with the Central Bank of Ireland following technical failures in its transaction monitoring system between 2021 and 2022.

In a Thursday blog post, Coinbase said the coding errors caused the exchange’s internal compliance software to only partially screen some transactions for suspicious activity. The company said it detected the issue through internal testing, fixed it within weeks, and later re-reviewed all affected transactions.

Coinbase Europe ultimately filed around 2,700 suspicious transaction reports on transactions totaling roughly $15 million, out of the 185,000 transactions flagged during the review period. The company said that these filings do not confirm illicit activity, but were made as required under Irish Anti-Money Laundering (AML) laws.

Read more