Georgia's central bank fined crypto exchange Bitexchange GEL 572 million

Georgia's National Bank inspected Bitexchange LLC, a licensed virtual asset service provider, in February 2026 as part of its planned supervision — and found gross violations of the law on prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing. The company was fined a total of GEL 572,118,000, and each of its two administrators was fined an additional GEL 7,000.

The overwhelming bulk of the penalty, GEL 572,033,000, concerned customer identification: Bitexchange conducted transactions through self-service kiosks without identifying and verifying customers as the law requires for every transaction regardless of amount, and failed to ensure the kiosk verification process agreed with the NBG. The regulator called identification the fundamental prerequisite of the entire AML framework.

The fine became public in a dispute: a Bitexchange representative claimed it was retaliation for information the company provided to the NBG. The central bank called that statement unfounded and intended to deliberately mislead the public, and published a detailed explanation of the violations. The affair also engulfed the regulator itself: NBG board member Nana Keinishvili was unanimously excluded from board work pending investigation over her alleged unlawful involvement with the company, which the bank says acted alone and outside her supervisory remit.

Fined GEL 572,118,000, almost all of it — GEL 572,033,000 — for kiosk transactions without customer identification; two administrators fined GEL 7,000 each.

Self-service kiosks let people trade crypto with no identity checks, gutting the core preventive control of the AML framework.

The kiosk verification process required under the VASP rule was never aligned with the regulator as mandated.

The scale — a nine-figure-lari fine plus personal fines on administrators — reflects violations found across the inspection rather than a one-off lapse.

In regulated money businesses, identification is not paperwork — serving anonymous customers through kiosks turns every transaction into a compliance violation.

The NBG publicly detailed the grounds for the fine and rejected Bitexchange's retaliation claim as deliberately misleading; board member Nana Keinishvili remains excluded from board work until the investigation establishes the facts.