South Korean financial regulators will investigate local banks over compliance with anti-money laundering (AML) guidelines for operations with cryptocurrency exchanges, as reported by a local news outlet Yonhap News yesterday, March 21.
According to Yonhap, the Financial Intelligence Unit (KoFIU) and the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) will start examining the corporate accounts of crypto exchanges in Korean banks next month.
In December 2017, FSC announced that it will ban anonymous cryptocurrency trading and require traders’ accounts on cryptocurrency exchanges to be associated with bank accounts registered under their real names, starting from Jan 30 this year.
After denying reports of an alleged cryptocurrency trading ban in the country as false, South Korean Finance Minister Kim Dong-yeon reaffirmed that the government will not ban or “suppress” the cryptocurrency market.
On March 6, the government of South Korea banned its public officials from holding and trading cryptocurrencies under the civil servants’ law. On Feb. 24, South Korean Blockchain Industry Association announced that it will inspect 33 of its members, among which are the Coinone, Bithumb, and Korbit cryptocurrency exchanges to evaluate their compliance with self-regulatory measures.