Amazon fined $135K by Treasury Dept. for selling goods to Cuba and other sanctioned countries

[El Presidente]

 

 

Amazon fined $135K by Treasury Dept. for selling goods to Cuba and other sanctioned countries

July 9, 2020 by Alberto de la Cruz

 

Via Compliance Week:

Marketplace giant Amazon will pay approximately $135,000 as part of a settlement with the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced Wednesday with regard to apparent sanctions violations derived from deficient screening processes.

The apparent violations were deemed “non-egregious” by OFAC, and Amazon voluntarily self-disclosed the incident in addition to cooperating with the subsequent investigation. The penalty amount is equal to the sum of half the transaction value for each apparent violation.

Deficiencies in Amazon’s sanctions screening processes led to the company providing goods and services to persons sanctioned by OFAC in Crimea, Iran, and Syria, the regulator explained in a Web notice. Amazon also accepted and processed orders on its Websites for persons located in or employed by the foreign missions of Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria. OFAC describes the transactions as consisting primarily of low-value retail goods and services.

[NSXCIGAR]

They probably made more than $135k selling it so came out ahead.

[mrmessy]

Seems like more was spent on investigating and prosecuting the case than what was received.

Sent from my SM-N976U using Tapatalk

[Chibearsv]

Probably face masks, soap, and toilet paper. That’ll teach those countries not to support terrorists. Amazon is low hanging fruit and big pockets for OFAC since it’s probably too hard to find the really evil money transactions. What a waste of time and effort. 

[Capt. Corona]

I feel so much safer now because of it.  Great job guys...now go get me a box of incoming cuban cigars while we're on roll! ?

 

[NSXCIGAR]

13 minutes ago, Chibearsv said:

Probably face masks, soap, and toilet paper.

Yes, probably that. But exporting any of that stuff was going to bring a lot of heat at the time. All they had to do was click a US ship only button. And Amazon is really under scrutiny lately anyway. Not too smart. But Bezos can find $135k in his ex-wife's couch cushions.

[TheGipper]

4 hours ago, NSXCIGAR said:

They probably made more than $135k selling it so came out ahead.

There is no way Amazon's margin on "low cost goods" approaches anywhere close to 50%.

The company's overall margin in the most recent quarter for the entire company was 3.56%.  AWS (cloud, etc.) is the business unit that does the heavy lifting on their profits.  The retail consumables as a group mathematically have to be lower than that 3.56% margin.

There's not a lot of margin in selling everyday common goods.  Just ask the entire grocery store industry.

[NSXCIGAR]

3 hours ago, TheGipper said:

There is no way Amazon's margin on "low cost goods" approaches anywhere close to 50%.

The company's overall margin in the most recent quarter for the entire company was 3.56%.  AWS (cloud, etc.) is the business unit that does the heavy lifting on their profits.  The retail consumables as a group mathematically have to be lower than that 3.56% margin.

There's not a lot of margin in selling everyday common goods.  Just ask the entire grocery store industry.

Where does it say how much was sold? Is the fine amount related to the sales? Could have been $5 million in sales at a 3% margin.

[Habana Mike]

That's about a nanosecond or two of income for Amazon....wow.

[PigFish]

The real irony is the USPS probably  delivered the goods!

[Zigatoh]

They could probably get a settlement of that size in a few minutes through amazon live chat. 

[Capt. Corona]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielshapiro/2020/07/11/amazons-jeff-bezos-and-ex-wife-mackenzie-add-combined-22-billion-to-fortunes-in-one-week-walmart-walton/#73ff843930de

This may explain why Amazon could care less..........

 

[Esteban77]

NSXCIGAR,

   12 hours ago,  TheGipper said: 

There is no way Amazon's margin on "low cost goods" approaches anywhere close to 50%.

The company's overall margin in the most recent quarter for the entire company was 3.56%.  AWS (cloud, etc.) is the business unit that does the heavy lifting on their profits.  The retail consumables as a group mathematically have to be lower than that 3.56% margin.

There's not a lot of margin in selling everyday common goods.  Just ask the entire grocery store industry.

Where does it say how much was sold? Is the fine amount related to the sales? Could have been $5 million in sales at a 3% margin

“The penalty amount is equal to the sum of half the transaction value for each apparent violation.” So, TheGipper is right. It is $270,000.

 

Esteban77

[earthson]

19 hours ago, TheGipper said:

There is no way Amazon's margin on "low cost goods" approaches anywhere close to 50%.

The company's overall margin in the most recent quarter for the entire company was 3.56%.  AWS (cloud, etc.) is the business unit that does the heavy lifting on their profits.  The retail consumables as a group mathematically have to be lower than that 3.56% margin.

There's not a lot of margin in selling everyday common goods.  Just ask the entire grocery store industry.

THIS.  AWS (doing business under a variety of innocuous names) is holding a lot of intelligence agency contracts for their server farms.

[PigFish]

... so, what would the fines be on sending 1.8 billion in hard currency to Iran??? -LOL 

the Pig