Central Bank of Ireland fines Coinbase Europe €21.4M over major anti-money laundering monitoring failures

The Central Bank of Ireland has fined Coinbase Europe €21.4M for major anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing monitoring failures between 2021 and 2025.

The Central Bank of Ireland has fined Coinbase Europe €21,464,734 (€21.4M) for violating its anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorism financing (CFT) obligations related to transaction monitoring.

This breach occurred between April 23, 2021, and March 19, 2025, as stipulated by the Criminal Justice (Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing) Act 2010.

Coinbase Europe, a subsidiary of the Coinbase Group, offers crypto asset and wallet services to customers worldwide, enabling them to utilise the Coinbase Group’s trading platform for buying and selling crypto assets.

Colm Kincaid, Deputy Governor – Consumer & Investor Protection, says, “To be effective in combating 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. 

Today’s announcement follows the settlement reached between the Central Bank and Coinbase Europe on November 5, 2025.  

Coinbase Europe has admitted to the violations and accepted the facts. As a result, the Central Bank has decided that sanctions, including a reprimand and a fine of €30,663,906, are justified.

With a 30 per cent discount for settling, the final amount is €21,464,734.

Coinbase failed to monitor over 30M transactions

As a virtual asset service provider, Coinbase Europe must continuously monitor customer transactions. 

If at all the company suspects a transaction is related to money laundering or terrorist financing, it must quickly report this to the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) and the Revenue Commissioners.

Coinbase Europe has been fined due to problems with its transaction monitoring system, which failed to properly monitor over 30 million transactions in a year.

“Crypto has particular technological features which, together with its anonymity-enhancing capabilities and cross-border nature, make it especially attractive to criminals looking to move their funds. This is why firms engaged in crypto services must have robust controls in place to identify and report suspicious transactions,” adds Kincaid.

These transactions were worth more than €176B and made up about 31 per cent of all transactions during that time, reports the Central Bank of Ireland.

According to the Central Bank, Coinbase Europe’s lapses included failure to fully monitor customer transactions, inadequate internal controls, and delays in conducting additional monitoring of nearly 185,000 transactions.

As a result, the company filed 2,708 Suspicious Transaction Reports (STRs) years after the fact, covering offences such as money laundering, cyberattacks, drug trafficking, and child exploitation.

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

Coinbase Europe has agreed to these sanctions, which still need confirmation from the High Court before they take effect.