News

Maltese anti-money laundering regulators have fined cryptocurrency platforms Bequant Pro Ltd and Bequant Exchange Ltd nearly half a million euros in parallel actions that may herald stricter enforcement against virtual assets service providers, or VASPs, in Europe. Inspections by Malta's Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit, or FIAU, in 2021 identified egregious AML failures at both platforms, starting with inadequate assessments of customer- and business-related threats and a failure to conduct enhanced due diligence on high-risk clients, some of whom hailed from nations blacklisted by the Financial Action Task Force. Bequant Pro and Bequant Exchange's provision and management of digital wallets, tasks...