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Central Bank of Ireland Fines Coinbase Europe €21.5 Million for AML Monitoring Failures

The enforcement settlement follows coding faults that left €176 billion in transfers unscreened, triggering 2,708 suspicious transaction reports.

Overview

  • The Central Bank said five of 21 monitoring scenarios failed due to coding errors in 2021–2022, causing 30.4 million transactions—about 31% of activity—to go insufficiently screened over a 12‑month span.
  • Coinbase admitted the contraventions under an undisputed‑facts process, receiving a 30% discount from roughly €30.6 million to €21.5 million plus a formal reprimand.
  • A nearly three‑year retrospective review reran the affected transfers, flagged about 185,000 for further checks, and resulted in 2,708 STRs to Ireland’s Financial Intelligence Unit.
  • Regulators said the STRs cited suspected links to money laundering, fraud, drug trafficking, cyberattacks and child sexual exploitation, while neither side claimed proof of criminality.
  • The sanction may require High Court confirmation, and follows Coinbase’s move of its EU regulatory base from Ireland to Luxembourg under the MiCA regime.