3 18/02/2021 – 3:24 PM (GMT-4)
The U.S. Treasury Department has fined BitPay, a private company based in Atlanta, Georgia, for facilitating the processing of bitcoin payments to Cubans living on the island.
The Office for the Control of Foreign Assets (OFAC), which applied the sanction, issued a statement Thursday release that the company must pay more than half a million dollars ($ 507,375) “to settle its possible civil liability” for violating the embargo on Cuba.
This is the first Cuba-related sanction since OFAC Joe Biden assumed the presidency on 20 January.
BitPay allowed people who were in the Crimean region of Ukraine, Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Sudan and Syria will do business with merchants in the United States and elsewhere using digital technology, ”the statement said.
“BitPay allowed people in these jurisdictions to make transactions of up to $ 129,000 related to digital currencies,” explains OFAC.
According to the official report, between June 10, 2013 and September 16, 2018, BitPay processed 2,102 transactions on behalf of the people who were in Cuba according to the IP addresses and the information on the invoices.
“This behavior resulted in apparent violations of Executive Order 13685 of December 19, 2014,” including the Cuban Assets Control Regulations, the publication emphasizes.
It states that the amount of the civil pecuniary penalty applicable to such violations is $ 2,255,000, but taking into account some mitigating factors, the amount of $ 507,375 was agreed.
The latest of the sanctions imposed on US companies for favoring trade with Cuba is also related to cryptocurrency transfers, and it happened last December when the Treasury Department fined the technology company BitGo, of Palo Alto, California, which offered the digital wallet service to people in Cuba.
Several countries sanctioned by Washington, including those listed by the State Department as sponsors of terrorism, tend to use cryptocurrencies in their international transactions to circumvent financial controls. Nicolas Maduro’s regime in Venezuela is one of the advocates of the digital checkbook modality through the Petro.
A month earlier, OFAC forced the Western Union company to end its operations on the island after 21 years of service by transferring money to Cubans.
The Donald Trump administration’s sanction against FINCIMEX, attached to CIMEX and under the control of the GAESA military, officially went into effect on November 27 and dealt a severe financial blow to the Cuban regime, referring to the measure as an attack.
Recovery of this latter service will depend on President Joe Biden’s decision to release the remittance services by Western Union to Cuba, but so far the government has not made any statement on this.
However, the day before, Cuban-American leaders joined a bipartisan petition to Biden so that his government doesn’t soften policies or open negotiations with Cuba until democratic progress has been made on the island.
Democratic Senator Bob Menéndez, currently the highest-ranking Cuban American politician in Washington, and Republicans Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, along with Congressmen Carlos Giménez, Mario Díaz Balart and María Elvira Salazar and the mayors of Miami, Hialeah, Coral Gables and Doral, asked the president to uphold the policy of sanctions against Havana and demand the cessation of human rights violations in the Caribbean country.