On December 31, the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) under the Financial Services Commission of South Korea announced that it had issued an institutional warning and imposed a fine of 2.73 billion won (approximately US$1.88 million) on cryptocurrency exchange Korbit for violating its anti-money laundering (AML) obligations under the Specific Financial Information Act. The FIU also issued a "caution" order to Korbit's representative director and a "reprimand" to the person in charge of the AML report.
The sanctions pertain to three major violations discovered by the FIU during its on-site inspection of Korbit from October 16 to October 29, 2024: Korbit had approximately 22,000 cases of violations related to customer verification (CDD) and transaction restrictions, including accepting ambiguous identity documents, allowing transactions with incomplete customer information, and failing to fulfill its periodic customer reconfirmation obligations; it also conducted 19 asset transfer transactions with three undeclared overseas virtual asset service providers; and it failed to fulfill its money laundering risk assessment obligations before listing 655 new assets, including NFTs.
