The Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) under the Financial Services Commission said on April 13 it held a sanctions review committee meeting and decided to impose a 5.2 billion won fine on digital asset exchange Coinone and suspend part of its business for three months. It also decided to issue a disciplinary warning to the chief executive.

During the partial business suspension, existing customers can trade without restrictions. For new customers, virtual-asset buying, selling and exchange and won deposits and withdrawals are allowed, but external virtual-asset transfers in and out are temporarily restricted.

Earlier, the FIU said it conducted an on-site anti-money laundering (AML) inspection from April 21 to May 16 last year and found about 90,000 violations of the Special Financial Transaction Information Act. Violations included 10,113 breaches of the duty to ban transactions with unreported virtual-asset operators, about 40,000 breaches of customer due diligence obligations and about 30,000 breaches of transaction restriction obligations.

The FIU said of the measures, "It plans to finalise the amount of the fine after issuing advance notice of the fine and providing at least 10 days to submit opinions."

Coinone issued a statement saying, "We are taking this FIU sanctions decision seriously, and we are closely reviewing the shortcomings in the matters pointed out and proceeding with improvement measures." It added, "Nothing has been decided regarding whether to file an administrative lawsuit over the current measures, and we plan to carefully review various possibilities through the board of directors."