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A UK crypto exchange gets caught up in TD Bank’s money laundering case, a detained Binance executive is denied bail in Nigeria, and Tether’s largest customer is sued in the US.
A closer look at TD Bank’s record-breaking settlement in the US has revealed that a UK crypto exchange is closely tied to some of the bank’s most egregious anti-money laundering (AML) failures.
In a small section of TD’s Bank’s , the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) describes how the bank “missed or improperly reported” approximately 2,000 suspicious transactions made by clients, known as Customer Group C.
When opening accounts with TD Bank, the clients in Customer Group C claimed to run businesses in the sales finance and real estate sectors.
During customer due diligence (CDD) enquiries, Customer Group C informed the bank that the intended wire activity would not exceed $25,000, and the estimated annual sales revenue would not exceed $1m.
However, as noted by FinCEN, these same customers went on to make more than $1bn of transactions via TD Bank, with most transactions taking place in a nine-month period between 2023 and 2024.
More than 90 percent of the funds received by Customer Group C came from a UK-based crypto exchange, while more than 60 percent of funds sent by the group went to a Colombian financial institution (which also offers crypto-asset services).
In total, Customer Group C conducted an average of more than $100m in wire transfers each month, which FinCEN believes were reinvested in crypto trading activities in Colombia, China and the Middle East.
“This significantly deviated from Customer Group C’s onboarding documentation, which did not identify Colombia or China as jurisdictions through which cross-border transactions were expected to be processed,” said FinCEN.
As well as being UK-based, the crypto exchange in question is described as an “international” platform.
covered by žž, TD Bank was described by its own AML employees as being “convenient” for criminals.
Earlier this month, it was issued a $1.3bn fine by FinCEN, the largest penalty in the agency’s history, and the largest ever imposed under the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA).
Combined with other agencies that also brought charges against the bank, TD Bank’s total settlement came to a record-breaking $3.1bn.
No rest for Tigran Gambaryan
A Binance executive accused of money laundering in Nigeria is set to spend the remainder of his trial behind bars.
Tigran Gambaryan, head of financial crime compliance at Binance, has been detained in Nigeria since February this year, and faces criminal charges and a potential prison sentence.
Last week, Gambaryan was hoping that a fresh bail application may see him released from Kuje correctional facility, where he has suffered bouts of malaria and pneumonia, and is now unable to walk.
Instead, the Federal High Court in Abuja rejected the bail request, on the grounds that the application constitutes an abuse of court process.
As reported by Nigeria’s , Judge Emeka Nwite said Gambaryan’s application could not be granted while he is still challenging an earlier bail ruling at the Court of Appeal.
Nwite added that Gambaryan had failed to demonstrate that the Nigerian Correctional Service (NCoS) does not have adequate facilities to take care of his ill-health.
However, Nwite ordered the NCoS to refer Gambaryan to a regular hospital in Abuja for two to three days, with the trial set to continue in November.
US SEC sues Tether’s largest customer
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has Tether’s largest customer, Cumberland DRW, with operating as an unregistered securities dealer.
In an SEC published last week, the agency alleges that since 2018, Cumberland DRW has bought and sold more than $2bn worth of unregistered securities through Marea, its proprietary trading platform.
The unregistered securities named by the SEC include Matic (MATIC), Solana (SOL), Cosmos (ATOM), Algorand (ALGO) and Filecoin (FIL).
In the complaint, the SEC provides evidence to support its claim that each of these crypto-assets meets the definition of a security under federal law.
The lawsuit includes extensive quotations from the founders of the said crypto-assets, showcasing their efforts to market the assets to the investing public.
More than 1,500 high-net-worth individuals and entities use Marea to acquire crypto-assets, said the SEC, while Cumberland DRW is known to provide liquidity to the largest crypto exchanges, including Binance.
covered by žž, Cumberland DRW is likely the largest existing customer of stablecoin issuer Tether.
In 2022, an investigation by found that only one other entity, FTX-affiliated Alameda Research, had received more stablecoins from Tether in the previous year.
Together, Alameda Research and Cumberland had received $60bn in stablecoins, which at the time amounted to roughly two-thirds of all Tether in circulation.
By the end of 2022, FTX had collapsed into bankruptcy, taking Alameda Research down with it.
