The South Korean government is starting to take action against illegitimate cryptocurrency transactions, as well as all kinds of money laundering and fraud involving cryptocurrency. The news was announced by the Government Policy Coordination Office (OPC) on 20 April.
In the new application, it was stated that the authorities targeted "all illegal activities involving digital assets" during the "special implementation period" from April to June.
The new statement announced by the OPC is considered as a statement that various government agencies will be authorized to investigate, monitor and punish cryptocurrency businesses or virtual asset service providers (VASP).
The decision to implement such an audit is said to be taken during an OPC-led meeting on April 16 with representatives of various government agencies, including the Ministry of Economy and Finance, the Ministry of Science, Justice and the National Police Agency (NPA).
The Financial Services Commission (FSC), created in this context, will have the authority to monitor all entries and exits of the cryptocurrency. In addition, the FSC Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) will analyze data from exchanges and report suspicious transactions to prosecutors, police investigators and the national tax service.
As will be remembered, last month FSC issued a warning to cryptocurrency investors to check the listing status of the exchanges and advised them to use only “long-term sustainable” exchanges.
In addition, it was announced that the government would start to examine arbitrage trade. As it is known, South Korea's kimchi premium has increased to 22% in recent weeks, some investors have started to send money abroad to buy cryptocurrencies from exchanges outside of South Korea and withdraw this money to Korean stock exchanges to sell and profit.
The Ministry of Economy and Finance and the FSC's Financial Supervision Service (FSS) have also started a study to determine whether such arbitrage trading violates the country's foreign exchange laws.