The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has accepted $7,658,300 from PayPal Inc to settle potential civil liability for 486 apparent transgressions over several years.

The sanctions monitoring agency claims that PayPal infringed all manner of sanctions - against 'weapons of mass destruction proliferators', against Iran, Cuba, global terrorists, and the Sudan.

OFAC believes that for several years up to and including 2013, PayPal failed to employ adequate screening technology and procedures to identify the potential involvement of US sanctions targets in transactions that it was processing.

Also, between 2009 and 2013, PayPal processed 136 transactions totalling $7,091.77 for an individual on OFAC’s list of 'specially designated nationals'. Its 'automated interdiction filter' did not identify the account holder as a potential match to the SDN list at first. When it finally did, the PayPal risk people ignored it.  

A nasty shock is awaiting any non-US high-net-worth individuals who have downloaded some music or films without paying online and who have homes in the US: President Obama has just signed an executive order to block the property of designated or to-be-designated individuals engaging in unlawful online conduct. The order does not attempt to identify the kind of people or firms that are to fall into this regime - this is evidently to be a wide-spectrum dragnet that catches all. The Treasury is expected to come out with a set of parameters soon. Entry into the United States of all 'blocked persons' such as these is forbidden and their property is to be 'blocked'.

Some people might think it rather harsh of the US Government to punish one of its most servile allies in this way. In 2010, PayPal willingly suspended access for donations to the website of Wikileaks, which at that time had just begun to expose the Government's crimes. PayPal was not legally compelled to do this; it was a voluntary favour.