“Ripple Labs has been fined $700,000 by the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) in the first successful civil enforcement action against a virtual currency exchange.
According to the charge sheet brought by US authorities, Ripple Labs, and its subsidiary XRP II, "willfully violated several requirements of the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) by acting as a money services business (MSB) and selling its virtual currency, known as XRP, without registering with FinCEN, and by failing to implement and maintain an adequate anti-money laundering (AML) program designed to protect its products from use by money launderers or terrorist financiers".
“Virtual currency exchangers must bring products to market that comply with our anti-money laundering laws,”says FinCEN director Jennifer Shasky Calvery. “Innovation is laudable but only as long as it does not unreasonably expose our financial system to tech-smart criminals eager to abuse the latest and most complex products.”
FinCen's investigation runs concurrent with a probe by the Californian US Attorney General's office, which slapped a $450,000 fine on Ripple Labs, and ordered a migration of a portion of the company's business to a separate entity in order to bring its virtual currency operation within the existing regulatory framework for money services businesses.”
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