FinCEN wants its Huione ban to follow the name, and a broken comment portal has bought the public six more days to object
A prohibition attached to a name stops working the moment the name changes. Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network has proposed writing that problem out of one of its own rules, and on Friday it gave the public six more days to comment on the fix.
The rule is the special measure imposed on Huione Group in October 2025 and codified at 31 CFR 1010.664. It bars covered United States financial institutions from opening or maintaining a correspondent account for, or on behalf of, the Cambodia-based group and its named components. FinCEN issued it under section 311 of the USA PATRIOT Act, after finding reasonable grounds to conclude that the group was a foreign financial institution of primary money laundering concern, an assessment it says rests on the group's use to launder proceeds of cyber heists connected to North Korea and of virtual-currency investment scams run by criminal organizations based in Southeast Asia.
The proposal published on June 25 does two things. It would add H-Pay Service PLC to the covered components. It would also define a "successor entity" as any person that replaces Huione Group, or any component of it, by acquiring its assets in whole or in part, or carrying out the affairs of the group under a new name, or both.
FinCEN set out why. It assesses that H-Pay took over the business role of Huione Pay PLC after the National Bank of Cambodia revoked that company's payment services license, that H-Pay was incorporated in 2024 yet appeared on the central bank's list of licensed payment service institutions only in June 2025, and that by November 2025 H-Pay signage had replaced Huione Pay signage at the headquarters and at several branches. The agency points to an earlier turn of the same wheel. Huione Guarantee became Haowang Guarantee in October 2024, and after Telegram blocked its marketplace, customers were directed to Tudou Guarantee, in which Haowang had bought a stake.
H-Pay's own license did not last either, according to the notice, which records that the National Bank of Cambodia reportedly revoked it in an announcement on April 10, 2026. FinCEN says it has reason to believe the same sequence will run again with a further successor entity. That belief is the argument for the definition.
The extension is a plainer story. Comments had been due July 27. FinCEN said the public could not file electronically for six days, from June 25 to June 30, because of a technological problem with the portal, so it added six days to the clock. The deadline is now August 2, 2026.
