The post Coinbase faces €21.5m AML fine as Irish watchdog flags ‘ineffective’ TMS appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.

Ireland fined Coinbase Europe €21.5m after data issues left €173b in transactions unmonitored, with failures undisclosed during its VASP registration and now forcing an exit to Luxembourg. Summary The Central Bank of Ireland fined Coinbase Europe €21.5m after data configuration failures in an outsourced TMS left about 30m transactions, worth roughly €173b, unmonitored between 2021 and 2022.​ Coinbase Europe did not detect or disclose the issues during its 2022 VASP application, with management only fully briefed in 2023, leading the regulator to brand its oversight of Coinbase Inc. as ineffective.​ The VASP registration will lapse at end‑2025 as Coinbase Europe relocates to Luxembourg, even as the firm lobbies U.S. Treasury to recognize KYT and blockchain analytics as cutting‑edge AML tools. The Central Bank of Ireland fined Coinbase Europe €21.5 million ($25 million) for failures in transaction monitoring systems that left approximately 30 million transactions unmonitored between 2021 and 2022, according to settlement documents released in November 2025. The fine represents the fourth-largest penalty ever issued by Ireland’s financial regulator. Coinbase Europe’s registration as a Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) with the Central Bank will lapse at the end of 2025, with the company ceasing operations in Ireland and relocating to Luxembourg, according to the settlement. The enforcement action centered on what regulators described as a breakdown in Coinbase Europe’s anti-money laundering compliance systems. The unmonitored transactions represented 31% of the company’s business volume during the affected period, totaling approximately €173 billion, according to the Central Bank. Coinbase Europe had outsourced transaction monitoring to its U.S. parent company, Coinbase Inc., which operated a transaction monitoring system (TMS) designed to flag suspicious activity. Due to data configuration issues, five of 21 high-risk monitoring scenarios failed to operate as intended from April 23, 2021, until April 29, 2022, according to the settlement document. The…

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Filed under: News - @ December 19, 2025 2:30 pm