Binance was slapped with a $4.3 billion fine because it let groups like Hamas and ISIS receive funds: Treasury Department

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 267 points – Binance was slapped with a $4.3 billion fine because it let groups like Hamas and ISIS receive funds: Treasury Department
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Binance was slapped with a $4.3 billion fine because it let groups like Hamas and ISIS receive funds: Treasury Department::"Can barely buy an AK-47 with 600 bucks," a Binance compliance staffer told his boss in 2019, per regulators.

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How do those companies pay these gigantic fine? $4 billion wire transfer? Does the bank even allow wiring that huge amount of money? Monthly Installment? Trucks carrying palettes of money?

The balance is kept at a bank and the banks have ledgers with the reserve bank who in turn adds $40B to the asset column and negates $40B from the liabilities column. That's the basic version. Nothing changes hands per se. It's just 1s and 0s on a computer.

In cobol nonetheless.

You mean COBOL.

Fraudsters HATE this one old-timey computer language

Edit: for real tho, can learning COBOL easily translate into some bank or bank-adjacent role even if they don't have a CS degree or whatever?

I've heard 2nd stories of the few old-timers who still know COBAL, FORTRAN, etc who have very generous salaries working in sectors like banking. It's probably too late now though.

Isn’t too late. Work in a very large bank. Some of the COBOL underpinnings will probably never die. The same cannot be said for their maintainers.

You're probably better off learning java at this point, its the future equivalent of COBOL for banking.

My bank only allows like $2 million dollars online wire transfer per day on their corporate account. Transferring billions would probably requires you to meet with your bank's account manager?

I'm unsure if the details of that process are public but presumably it is possible through coordination with the bank, the treasury department, or both. What I could find publicly was that CZ's personal fine of $70m is payable either by ETF, cashier's check or money order.

EDIT: This rabbit hole also led me to find out that this year, British American Tobacco has a $500m fine for violating some Weapons of Mass Destruction regulation. It sounds horrifying but they basically sold equipment to make cigarettes to the DPRK and tried to hide it. It's confronting seeing proof how blatantly corporations act. There was actual people who decided to do this.

I'm guessing if you have to pay the government, you can get government approval.

They hand over their chest full of gold coins and jewels.