A payment processing company has been slapped with a €435,576 fine by the FIAU for a series of anti-money laundering breaches linked to cryptocurrency. 

In an announcement on its website on Saturday, the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit said it had fined Phoenix Payments Limited following an inspection which had uncovered a series of regulatory breaches.  

The company’s directors are Francesc Xavier Alabart Lopez, a Spanish national, Keith Farrugia, a Maltese national, and Marco Lavanna, an Italian residing in Switzerland. 

The FIAU said it found shortcomings in the way the business collected information on customers’ business and occupation and their source of wealth and source of funds. 

The same was true when it came to ensuring it properly understood the anticipated level and nature of transactions, including the expected value and frequency of payments.

Nor did the company properly understand the jurisdictions through which transactions were being sent and received. 

These failures were observed in the majority of the files selected for the compliance review, the FIAU said. 

The FIAU noted that the company had not applied enhanced due diligence measures in five customer files. 

These files were all classified as posing a high or medium high risk by the company itself and involved customers having higher risk factors associated with them. 

All of these customers were linked to cryptocurrency, either by being a cryptocurrency service provider or as providers of crypto exchange services and in one instance, linked to a high-risk jurisdiction. 

In fact, even the basic level of due diligence had not been properly carried out, the FIAU said.  

The payment processing company was also fined by the financial services watchdog in March for alleged regulatory breaches. 

It has since filed a constitutional challenge claiming that its rights to a fair hearing were breached.