Irish Regulator Hits Coinbase With $24.7M Fine For AML Monitoring Failures

The Central Bank of Ireland has fined Coinbase $24.75 million (€21,464,734) for breaching anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorist financing (CTF) monitoring obligations between 2021 and 2025.

Coinbase Europe Fined By Irish Regulator

On Thursday, the Central Bank of Ireland announced its first enforcement action against the crypto sector after fining Coinbase Europe Limited, the European arm of the US exchange, for multiple anti-money laundering monitoring failures over the past four years.

According to the announcement, the Irish regulator and the crypto exchange settled on November 5, 2025, resulting in the $35.3 million (€30.6 million) penalty being reduced to $24.75 million after a 30% settlement scheme discount.

Coinbase Europe has admitted the prescribed contraventions and has agreed to the undisputed facts as set out in the Settlement Notice (…). The sanctions have been accepted by Coinbase Europe. The sanctions are subject to confirmation by the High Court and will take effect once confirmed.

Coinbase was fined for “faults in the configuration of their transaction monitoring system” that resulted in over 30 million transactions not being properly monitored over 12 months. As the Central Bank detailed, the value of these transactions amounted to €176 billion, approximately 31% of all Coinbase Europe transactions conducted in the period when the faults existed.

As a registered Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) in Ireland, the crypto exchange is required to monitor customer transactions and file a Suspicious Transaction Report (STR) with the national Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) and Revenue Commissioners if it suspects that any given transaction is facilitating money laundering or terrorist financing.

Nonetheless, Coinbase’s European arm took almost 3 years to fully complete monitoring of the over 30 million impacted transactions, which led to the reporting of 2,708 STRs to the FIU for analysis and potential investigation. The submitted STRs contained suspicions of serious criminal activities, the statement noted.

Colm Kincaid, Deputy Governor of Consumer and Investor Protection, asserted that “to be effective in combatting financial crime, law enforcement agencies rely on regulated financial institutions to have systems in place to monitor transactions and report suspicions. The failure of such a system within any financial institution creates an opportunity for criminals to evade detection – and criminals will take that opportunity.”

“Where system failures do occur, it is imperative that they are reported to the Central Bank without delay so that appropriate actions can be taken to manage and mitigate the risk,” he concluded.

 Coinbase Called ‘Corruption Factory’

Last week, Coinbase also faced scrutiny in the US, after Senator Chris Murphy accused the crypto exchange of participating in President Donald Trump’s alleged “corruption factory.”

As reported by Bitcoinist, the Democratic Senator claimed that the crypto exchange’s donations to Trump’s presidential campaign were part of a political payoff that allegedly resulted in the dismissal of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)’s lawsuit against the exchange.

Coinbase’s CLO, Paul Grewal, and CPO, Faryar Shirzad, refuted the claims, affirming that the Senator’s allegations were misinformed. Shirzad argued that the SEC lawsuits against the exchange and multiple other crypto companies “were part of a grotesque pattern of bullying and abuse of power by the previous chair.”

Meanwhile, Grewal asserted that “What was corrupt was allowing us to go public ‘in the public interest’ and then suing us. What was corrupt was what the Third Circuit held was an arbitrary and capricious denial of our request to get basic rules for crypto.”

It’s worth noting that Coinbase has openly criticized the previous administration’s crypto crackdown, asking for a more welcoming approach and clear regulations. Earlier this year, the exchange filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to seek information on the SEC’s spending on enforcement actions against crypto firms during the Biden Administration.