On Monday, the De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) slapped Binance with a huge $3.4 million fine for not obtaining regulatory approval to work in the country.
The bank claims that Binance, the biggest cryptocurrency exchange company by trading volume, has continued to provide services in the Netherlands without the needed registration and approval.
According to the bank, the penalty was given in April 2022, but Binance objected to it and showed that it’d go for appeal.
The bank also issued a public warning to the world’s biggest Crypto exchange company in August 2021 on the grounds that it violated the Netherlands’ money-laundering laws.
Then, DNB warned that the violations might increase the risk of users becoming more involved in terrorist financing or money laundering.
In addition, the Dutch central bank claimed that the Crypto exchange firm had a competitive advantage against firms owning a DNB registration when it was in non-compliance.
DNB, which needs VASP (virtual asset service providers) to finish its registration under the Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Prevention Act since May 21, 2020, maintained that violation made by Binance is punishable by a 3rd-category fine, indicating that the administrative fine comes with a base amount of €2 million.
The big amount was influenced by Binance huge trading volume
Despite the fine coming as a base amount of $2.03 million, the Bank gave a heftier penalty because of Binance’s huge trading volume.
DNB gave some reasons for taking such a decision. The regulator pointed out, “Binance isn’t only the biggest provider of cryptocurrency services globally, but equally has a very large number of customers in the Netherlands with world daily trading volume reaching “$13.7 billion”.
More so, this increased penalty was because of the prolonged violations by Binance, which started from May 2020, when DNB launched the registration obligation, to December 2021.
At present, Binance has submitted its registration application, and the central bank is checking it. DNB has therefore lessened the fine by 5% because Binance has submitted a registration application, and it has been “relatively transparent about its operations throughout the process.” The platform has even created a local branch called Binance Nederland BV.
Bar the drawbacks, Binance has received a certification from the Bank of Spain in early July 2022 to work as a VASP in the country.
Also, in May, Italy, and France licensed the company as an official VASP in their respective countries. At the same time, Abu Dhabi, in April, granted the company provisional approval to work as a broker-dealer.