Order subject to penalty for Peken Global Limited for offering crypto services in the Netherlands without the legally required registration

Reason for the order subject to penalty
 

• Pursuant to the law, crypto service providers fulfil an important gatekeeper role in the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing. This required crypto service providers to have registration with DNB until December 30, 2024.
• Peken Global Limited provided crypto services in the Netherlands without registration with DNB.  
• DNB imposed an order subject to penalty for this non-compliance.  

Gatekeepers

The Anti-Money Laundering and Anti-Terrorist Financing Act (Wet ter voorkoming van witwassen en financieren van terrorisme – Wwft) aims to counter the laundering of criminal proceeds and the financing of terrorism. Action against money laundering is of high importance to ensure effective countering of different forms of serious crime. Concealing the origin of criminal proceeds enables perpetrators to keep out of the reach of the investigative authorities and enjoy their ill-gotten gains undisturbed.

The registration requirement for crypto service providers was introduced on 21 May 2020 because of the high risk of money laundering and terrorist financing associated with crypto services. This is related to the anonymity associated with crypto transactions. Without the registration requirement, it is less easy to monitor whether the risk of criminal financial flows is sufficiently countered.

PGL contravened the objectives of the Wwft by providing crypto services in the Netherlands without registration with DNB. Among other factors, this meant that PGL was unable to report unusual transactions to the Financial Intelligence Unit-Netherlands (FIU-NL) during the period of non-compliance. As a result, a large number of unusual transactions may have gone unnoticed by the investigative authorities. 

Registration requirement 

Since 21 May 2020, companies wishing to offer crypto services in or from the Netherlands were required on the basis of the Wwft to register with DNB. Following the implementation of the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCAR) on 30 December 2024, a license or notification for these activities is required from the Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM) or another European supervisory authority. The order subject to penalty imposed on PGL by DNB concerns the period during which PGL was required to register with DNB.

Order subject to penalty

An order subject to penalty is a remedial measure that instructs (orders) a company to do something or to cease doing something. In this case, DNB ordered PGL to stop offering crypto services in or from the Netherlands without the required registration with DNB. DNB gave PGL a period of eight weeks to comply with the order without being required to pay penalties. This period ended on 30 September 2024. The order subject to penalty indicated that PGL would have to pay €500,000 in penalties immediately after the expiry of this period for each week during which it failed to comply with the order in full. This penalty amount could reach a maximum of €4 million. Now that the full forfeiture period, namely eight weeks, has expired, this leads to PGL having to pay €4,000,000.

Objection 

PGL has not lodged an objection to the order subject to penalty; as a result, the order subject to penalty became irrevocable.  

Further information

Read the full text of the order subject to penalty (in Dutch), with the exception of confidential information, below. You can also contact our Information Desk by telephone on 0800 -020 1068 (freephone in the Netherlands) or +31 20 524 9111 (if calling from abroad).