An €500,000 (569,988) penalty payment has been imposed on LocalBitcoins Oy for failing to identify and verify the identities of customers who signed up to its trading exchange platform.

The penalty was issued by the Finnish Financial Supervisory Authority (FIN-FSA) after an inspection on how LocalBitcoins Oy handled, among more, measures such as counter-terrorist financing and anti-money laundering.

“The overall assessment concerning the amount of the penalty payment took account of the nature, extent and duration of the non-compliance with a key obligation in anti-money laundering,” FIN-FSA said.

The authority also considered the financial position of the company when deciding on the penalty.

LocalBitcoins was a peer-to-peer bitcoin exchange platform based in Helsinki in Finland which stopped trading in February 2023.

The company has the right to appeal the decision within 30 days to the Helsinki Administrative Court.

Over €9m in sanctions in 2025

So far this year, the Finnish Financial Supervisory Authority has imposed sanctions totalling €9,318,000 ($10,643,048). That is a large sum compared to the €252,000 ($287,764) raised from eight sanctions in 2024.

Besides this penalty, other sanctions this year were issued to:

June: Alexandria Group Plc, one of Finland’s largest investment service companies – a combined penalty of €1m ($1,138,779) for multiple omissions regarding its services.

May: S-Bank Plc (S-Pankki) – a combined penalty of €7,670,000 ($8,682,136) for omissions in its operational risk management.

March: Savcor Technologies Oy – a combined penalty of €100,000 ($107,930) for failing to notify managers’ transactions, and for stating an incorrect date in a transaction notification.

March: BBS-Bioactive Bone Substitutes Plc – a penalty of €30,000 ($32,380) for several failings connected to listed companies’ notification obligations.

January: Three individuals connected to BBS-Bioactive Bone Substitutes Plcj were found to have failed to notify the issuer and the FIN-FSA of transactions that were made on their own account within the required time limit – which is three days. The notification delays varied from around two months to more than eight months. The penalties were:

• individual 1 – €4,000 ($4,155);
• individual 2 – €5,000 ($5,194);
• individual 3 – €9,000 ($9,350).