Dunama, which operates South Korea’s largest cryptocurrency trade, stated it could enchantment the 35.2 billion received ($25 million) high-quality and different sanctions imposed on Upbit by South Korea’s monetary watchdog’s intelligence division.
Along with the high-quality, the Monetary Intelligence Unit (FIU) imposed a three-month suspension on onboarding new clients and issued a warning to executives because it cracks down on anti-money laundering (AML) and know-your-customer (KYC) violations, native information service Newsis reported on Monday.
“We’re conducting a cautious inner investigation, together with evaluating the accuracy of the sanctions outcomes,” a Dunamu spokesperson informed CoinDesk through electronic mail. The division has dedicated fraud previously, a spokeswoman stated.
“The FIU imposed a high-quality of two billion received on Hanbitco for KYC deficiencies involving about 200 customers, however the high-quality was later reversed by a courtroom in Seoul, concluding that the violation didn’t quantity to cash laundering,” the spokesperson stated.
Native monetary authorities stated the marketing campaign is a part of a broader effort to strengthen anti-money laundering enforcement within the digital asset sector within the nation. It defined that the inspections primarily give attention to KYC compliance and reporting of suspicious monetary transactions.
Earlier this month, the FIU introduced that it had found “roughly 5.3 million violations of know-your-customer obligations” “throughout on-site anti-money laundering inspections carried out in Dunamu.” Dunham additionally stated he did not report 15 suspicious transactions.
An organization spokesperson stated, “Dunam (Upbit Korea) will strengthen investor safety measures and make additional efforts to forestall this from occurring once more.” “We’ll proceed to do our greatest to offer a secure buying and selling setting for all our clients.”
Information of the inspection comes because the Monetary Providers Fee ordered exchanges to droop new crypto lending merchandise till formal tips are carried out, citing elevated danger to customers. FIU is an establishment of the FSC.
“The FIU will proceed to examine and evaluation the authorized compliance programs of crypto asset operators with a view to set up a strong anti-money laundering system,” the company stated.
In a separate assertion, the FIU reported that it inspected 4 different crypto exchanges, Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit, and GOPAX, to evaluate their AML and different regulatory compliance and located that these exchanges have been additionally in violation of a number of guidelines and laws. Not one of the exchanges responded to CoinDesk’s requests for remark.
South Korea’s monetary regulation marketing campaign is carried out in a “first in, first out” order, and every trade might be inspected within the order wherein it’s reviewed. The primary goal after the August 2024 analysis was Dunamu, adopted by Korbit (October 2024), GOPAX (December 2024), Bithumb (March 2025), and Coinone (April 2025).
In accordance with knowledge from Coingecko, six crypto exchanges function in South Korea, together with Upbit (Bithumb, Korbit, INEX, Oneone, GoPax), which is merging with Naver and is claimed to be contemplating an IPO on Nasdaq, with a mixed buying and selling quantity of about $2.6 billion previously 24 hours.
