A newly unearthed report from South Korea's fiscal watchdogs has revealed the rationale backside the country'due south 2022 crypto crackdown that played a featured role in 'Crypto Winter'.

Digital Today dug up the "2017 Anti-Money Laundering Almanac Report" which showed the Financial Intelligence Unit had identified more half a million crypto transactions in South Korea in 2022 related to illegal activities.

The 519,908 crypto transactions were flagged past authorities as "suspicious" and the upswing in money laundering fuelled the national government's decision to carry out a fractional crypto crackdown in 2022.

The report took several years to exist made public, despite being issued in November 2022.

Crypto exchange director allegedly involved in money laundering

According to the 2022 annual report, one of the most prominent money laundering cases involved an undisclosed crypto substitution.

The Financial Services Committee detailed that the director, nicknamed "Mr. A" in the report, transferred money from his business relationship to other commutation accounts later on having received funds from traders within the exchange'southward corporate accounts.

Later, Mr. A transferred the coin to his relatives' accounts, repeating the same blazon of transactions, reaching a total transferred amount of tens of "trillions" of Korean Won. They reported that Mr. A ultimately managed to evade taxes in the state.

Increased crypto money laundering led to the crackdown

That case and others led to South Korean financial watchdogs partially smashing downwards on virtual assets in 2022. Based on the 2022 report, the Financial Services Commission concluded the following:

"With the rise and diversification of the financial market base due to the emergence of Kagasan Mountain and Fintech, the money laundering criminal offence using cryptos has increased non only in quantity, merely also in terms of quality, and is condign increasingly complicated."

Cointelegraph reported on March v that South korea'due south National Assembly passed a revised bill on the reporting and use of individual financial transaction information, focusing on the introduction of a permit system for crypto exchanges.

With the mensurate, virtual asset operators like exchanges should written report their movements to the Fiscal Intelligence Unit nether the Financial Services Commission, aiming to strengthen the anti-money laundering systems.