The Korean Financial Supervisory Commission has laid out strong measures to crack down on illegal activities within the cryptocurrency market.
It plans to create a special task force to investigate any cryptocurrency transactions that it classes as 'suspicious'.
Kim Mok-yeon with the details.
The Financial Supervisory Commission's Financial Intelligence Unit announced on Thursday that it will create a special task force to investigate suspicious virtual currency transactions.
The task force is set to evaluate and analyze suspicious transactions handed over by six local banks that have the highest number of cryptocurrency transactions.
Earlier this week, the government imposed obligations for these banks to report what the government calls "suspicious transactions" to the FIU beginning January 30th, the date when investors will be allowed to create new accounts under their real names.
The government has categorized dealings that exceed 9,400 U.S. dollars per day or 18,800 dollars per week as 'suspicious transactions'.
It also classified accounts that traded frequently as 'suspicious', with accounts that performed more than five trades a day or seven trades a week included in the list.
Once the FIU finishes its review of the suspicious dealings, it will hand over transactions related to tax evasion to the National Tax Service and the Korea Customs Service, and transactions related to financial crimes to investigative agencies such as the police.
The Financial Supervisory Service said that it will also strengthen its monitoring of virtual currency transactions by financial companies by elevating the current anti-money laundering team to a larger department and designating former commissioner of the FIU Yoo Kwang-yeol as the head of that department.
The latest move comes as part of efforts to prevent illegal activities, such as money laundering or tax evasion, that could occur from the abuse of cryptocurrency systems.
Kim Mok-yeon, Arirang News.