MisterTango was fined by the Central Bank of Lithuania

The MisterTango payment processor has been fined by the Central Bank of Lithuania and its activity has been restricted. The reason for the sanctions is the violation of the provisions regarding the prevention of money laundering and the financing of terrorism.

An inspection conducted by the Supervisory Service of the Bank of Lithuania found that, in some cases, the company did not properly identify its customers. Also, KYC information was incomplete and was not updated in a timely manner.

“The Bank of Lithuania pays particular attention to money laundering and the prevention of terrorist financing and will continue to do so in the future. Serious and systematic violations were found within the company, in some cases repeatedly committed. The Bank of Lithuania has previously established that MisterTango, UAB did not comply with the requirements of the Law of the Republic of Lithuania on the prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing, but the company did not take appropriate measures to remove the deficiencies detected. We assume a zero tolerance attitude for violating AML requirements, so we applied the strict sanctions provided by law ”,

said Marius Jurgilas, a member of the Board of Directors of the Bank of Lithuania.

It also amends the suspension of activity

MisterTango was fined 245,000 euros and has 20 working days to submit a plan to remedy the problems found. The company must implement complete KYC / AML procedures by January 31, 2020.

Meanwhile, its activity has been restricted to transactions for clients who have complete documentation.

Customers holding funds in MisterTango accounts will be able to request the transfer of money to other accounts.

This is the third time that MisterTango, UAB has been sanctioned for violating AML / CTF requirements, previously being amended in 2016 and 2018.

Crypto exchanges, the most affected

MisterTango is one of the few payment processors that offers cryptocurrency exchange services. In 2018, the company reported transactions of 1.2 billion euros.

The suspension of its activity affected many crypto platforms, including from Romania. For example, Ro.Exchange temporarily blocked euro deposits and withdrawals as a result of the MisterTango suspension:

“At present, withdrawals and deposits of the euro are blocked. We will analyze the situation and make a decision when we will receive more official information. From the insurance received all the funds are safe and there is the possibility (more complicated) to be withdrawn in other accounts controlled by the company. The account balance Sunday, October 27 is 8227.61 euros “

said Alin Timicer.

We were affected and surprised by the problem encountered with MisterTango, there were some red flags for a long time from various sources but we hope that everything will be for the better. Moreover, we found out from other sources, we have not yet received anything official. So far, after almost a year of collaboration we have nothing to reproach, everything worked flawlessly.

The problems encountered by MisterTango will not affect customers as Withdraw can be done on the amounts of money in the accounts. We are already in the process of opening an account at another fintech so that in 1-2 days everything will be perfectly functional again.

said Marius Mora, CEO of LDV Bank.

There is no official statement from MisterTango at the time of publication of this article.