On Thursday evening the US Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, FinCEN, declared MEXC Global a "primary money laundering concern" and ordered every US financial institution to stop processing funds transfers involving the exchange. If you hold funds on MEXC from Germany, Austria, Switzerland or anywhere else in Europe, here is what the order does and does not mean for you, and a sensible way to act on it.
What did FinCEN actually do to MEXC?
The order, issued under Section 9714 of the Combating Russian Money Laundering Act, finds that MEXC processed at least 16 billion dollars connected to illicit activity between May 2021 and May 2026. That includes close to 1.5 billion dollars tied to Russian sanctions evasion, 232 million dollars in direct transactions with sanctioned entities, and roughly 2 billion dollars linked to cybercrime actors, including North Korean and Iranian networks. FinCEN calls MEXC's compliance programme "severely deficient" despite its public bans on users from Iran and North Korea.
Two details matter. First, this is a FinCEN special measure, not an OFAC sanction: MEXC is not on a global blacklist, and holding an account there is not illegal. Second, the ban takes effect 30...
English (US)