16 arrested for illegal fx transactions of virtual assets

An investor of virtual assets in his thirties, founded seven paper companies for a year since 2020 under his own name and borrowing names of friends. He wired 500 billion won over 1,116 transactions to a paper company overseas on grounds of importing cosmetics. The company used this money to purchase bitcoins on an overseas virtual asset exchange.

The virtual assets purchased overseas were immediately wired to his electronic wallet. He resold these assets on a domestic exchange platform and earned around 5 billion won in profit. The person had taken advantage of the fact that domestic virtual assets were sold at higher prices than overseas assets.

The Seoul office of the Korea Customs Service reported on Tuesday that 16 people were arrested for illegally trading foreign assets to gain profit. The amount of illegal foreign currencies amounted to 2.07 trillion won. "Foreign exchange transactions performed to gain profit between price difference in domestic and foreign virtual assets are likely to violate the Foreign Exchange Transaction Act," said Lee Min-geun, the chief of the Investigation 2 Bureau at the Seoul Customs Office.


Hee-Chang Park ramblas@donga.com