The Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network has ordered U.S. financial institutions to stop sending or receiving funds involving MEXC Global, a large cryptocurrency exchange that federal officials say became a channel for sanctions evasion, cybercrime and other illicit finance.

The 24-page order, announced Friday, applies to conventional money and convertible virtual currency. It takes effect 30 days after publication in the Federal Register and has no scheduled end date. MEXC said its platform remains operational while it reviews the order and begins an independent examination of its controls.

A transfer ban with broad reach

The order prohibits any covered U.S. financial institution from engaging in a transfer from or to MEXC Global. Its definition reaches the exchange’s overseas branches, subsidiaries, offices and successor entities, while expressly excluding any U.S.-based affiliates from the definition of MEXC used for this action.

FinCEN acted under Section 9714 of the Combating Russian Money Laundering Act. The statute, reproduced in the official U.S. Code, permits Treasury to restrict transfers involving foreign financial institutions when it finds reasonable grounds to identify a primary money-laundering concern connected to Russian illicit finance. FinCEN said it consulted Justice, State, federal banking agencies, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission; none objected based on the information provided.

What Treasury alleges

FinCEN said its analysis of public and nonpublic information, including blockchain data, linked $16.7 billion in transactions through MEXC between May 2021 and May 2026 to sanctions evasion, cybercrime and other illicit activity. The agency attributed nearly $1.5 billion to Russian sanctions-evasion exposure and said $232 million involved direct transactions with entities sanctioned by the United States, European Union or United Kingdom.

A Treasury summary said the exchange continued dealing with the sanctioned Russian platforms Garantex and Grinex as recently as June. It also alleged that MEXC processed activity tied to Iran, North Korea, ransomware, scams and darknet markets. Reuters independently reported the order and Treasury’s central allegation that the exchange facilitated at least $16 billion in suspect transactions.

Those figures are government findings, not a criminal conviction or a judicial judgment against MEXC. Much of the evidence cited in the order is not public, which limits outside evaluation of FinCEN’s transaction classifications and attribution methods.

MEXC says services remain normal

In a brief company statement, MEXC said it was reviewing the action with legal and compliance teams, that operations remained normal and that user assets were secure. The company said it would engage with FinCEN and other authorities and had started an independent review of its anti-money-laundering and sanctions controls. It did not address the transaction totals or specific counterparties cited by Treasury.

Regulatory concerns about the exchange predate Friday’s order. The Financial Services Authority of Seychelles said in an August enforcement notice that MX Global Ltd operated the MEXC platform from Seychelles without the license required under the country’s virtual-asset law. The authority advised investors and counterparties to use caution.

How compliance will work

The prohibition goes beyond blocking a correspondent bank account. FinCEN rejected narrower recordkeeping or reporting measures because they would still allow transfers to continue, including through indirect relationships and digital-asset channels. The order leaves existing Bank Secrecy Act reporting and Treasury sanctions duties intact.

FinCEN also acknowledged a practical limit: institutions cannot always prevent an incoming crypto transfer before it arrives. The order therefore permits a covered institution to reject or otherwise handle an incoming transfer based on the facts, including when funds passed through an unhosted wallet or returning them would conflict with risk controls. Willful violations may bring civil or criminal penalties.

The 30-day implementation period gives banks, money transmitters and covered digital-asset firms time to identify accounts, wallet addresses and intermediaries connected to MEXC. Because crypto transfers can move through several wallets before reaching a regulated platform, institutions will have to decide how much transaction history is sufficient to establish that MEXC was involved. FinCEN said existing compliance tools should be adequate, but the order recognizes that attribution is not always immediate or certain.

Why the order matters

The action uses access to U.S. financial infrastructure as leverage against an exchange headquartered abroad. FinCEN described MEXC as one of the world’s 20 largest centralized crypto venues by trading volume, processing more than $1 billion in daily transactions while holding about $5 billion in reserves as of mid-2026. The scale makes the order more consequential than an action against a small service with limited liquidity.

For MEXC customers outside the United States, the announcement does not itself close the platform. Its immediate operational effect falls on U.S. institutions that connect to it directly or detect its role in a transfer once the order becomes effective. This is also distinct from an asset freeze: the order targets transfers by covered U.S. institutions and states that it does not replace separate sanctions obligations.

The broader impact will depend on whether foreign banks and exchanges also reduce exposure, whether MEXC changes its controls, and whether the company presents information that persuades FinCEN to modify or exempt parts of the order. FinCEN reserved authority to grant exemptions, but the order provides no automatic review date. That leaves the exchange’s access to U.S. financial channels dependent on regulatory engagement after the prohibition begins.