The U.S. the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned 22 individuals and 104 entities operating in 20 countries for their role in facilitating Russian sanctions evasion, including John Desmond Hanafin, Founder of Dubai based Huriya Private, a fintech firm, who has an active Ethereum address included as an identifier on his SDN List entry. Hanafin is the founder and CEO of Huriya Private FZE LLE, a Dubai-based financial services company also sanctioned today for its role in funneling Russian funds into the UAE.  According to OFAC’s press release, Hanafin in his role at Huriya has been working since the outset of the Russia-Ukraine War to help Russian nationals protect their assets from sanctions. Much of this activity has involved helping Russian nationals move their money into UAE bank accounts and obtain fraudulent passports.  As per Chainalysis blog , John Hanafin’s on-chain transactions may shed light on Huriya’s Russian sanctions eva...

  US based Poloniex, LLC, a Delaware company with its principal place of business in Boston, Massachusetts which previously operated an online trading and settlement platform previously doing business as Poloniex Inc. (hereinafter collectively “Poloniex”) has agreed to remit $7,591,630 to settle its potential civil liability for 65,942 apparent violations of multiple sanctions programs with countries such as Syria, Sudan, Iran, and Crimea with U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC.)   As noted by OFAC, between January 2014 and November 2019, the Poloniex trading platform allowed customers apparently located in sanctioned jurisdictions to engage in online digital asset-related transactions consisting of trades, deposits, and withdrawals—with a combined value of $15,335,349, despite having reason to know their location based on both Know Your Customer information and internet protocol address data. As per the OFAC statement, the settlement...