Coinone has 10 days to dispute the findings before the FIU finalizes the fine and other penalties.
Crypto News
South Korea's Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) has fined cryptocurrency exchange Coinone 5.2 billion won, equivalent to $3.5 million, and imposed a three-month partial business suspension over a series of Anti-Money Laundering failures.
The FIU, operating under the Financial Services Commission, accused Coinone of failing to verify user identities in approximately 70,000 cases, according to reports from The Korea Times, Chosun, and Yonhap News. The regulator also alleged the exchange facilitated more than 10,000 transactions with 16 foreign cryptocurrency exchanges not registered with South Korean authorities, despite repeated warnings.
Additional allegations include marking customer verification as complete when key information was still missing and failing to restrict transactions for users whose due diligence checks had not been completed. The partial suspension prevents new customers from depositing or withdrawing funds from the platform until the ban is lifted. Coinone's chief executive, Cha Myung-hoon, is also receiving an official administrative reprimand, though the measure carries no criminal penalty.
Coinone has 10 days to dispute the findings before the FIU finalizes the fine and other penalties. The action makes Coinone the second South Korean exchange to face regulatory penalties in the past month. In March, Bithumb, the country's second-largest crypto exchange by trading volume, was fined $24 million and handed a six-month partial suspension over alleged Anti-Money Laundering failures.
The back-to-back crackdowns follow an incident in which Bithumb erroneously sent customers 620,000 Bitcoin instead of 620,000 Korean won, an error worth roughly $42 billion at the time. That incident prompted the Bank of Korea to call on lawmakers to introduce stricter controls on exchanges, including trading curbs that could suspend activity in the event of unusual price movements or abnormal behavior.
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