Bithumb scores a legal win in South Korea as six-month suspension is lifted by local judge
South Korea’s financial watchdog imposed a $24.6 million fine on Bithumb and partial suspension that came into effect last month.
What to know:
- A South Korean court has overturned a six-month partial business suspension imposed on Bithumb, one of the country’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, while leaving unclear whether a $24.6 million fine is also on hold.
- Regulators had accused Bithumb of about 6.65 million violations of anti-money laundering rules, including failures to verify customer identities and to block transactions that should have been stopped.
- The ruling comes amid broader regulatory scrutiny of South Korea’s crypto sector, including a new data-sharing probe into Bithumb, Upbit and other platforms, and follows Bithumb’s recent mistaken distribution of billions of dollars’ worth of bitcoin to users.
Bithumb, one of South Korea’s largest crypto exchanges, filed a request with the court requesting it end the suspension and fine imposed by the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) in March along after the regulator said it discovered the exchange had committed millions of violations of the country’s anti-money laundering rules.
The sanctions stemmed from violations of the Act on Reporting and Using Specified Financial Transaction Information, the Financial Services Commission said in March.
The FIU said Bithumb committed about 6.65 million violations, of which 3.55 million involved failures to carry out required customer identity verification, while 3.04 million were related to cases where the exchange failed to properly block transactions that should have been blocked.
