The Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) from South Korea is investigating suspicious foreign exchange trades totaling 800 billion won, or $624.26 million, at Woori Bank’s sales office, The Korea Times reports.
“It is hard for us to determine whether the transaction was processed in accordance with submitted invoices. The transaction volume was so huge that we reported it to the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS),” a spokesperson from Woori Bank commented.
On June 23, the financial watchdog conducted an on-site inspection of the lender in response to the report. An FSS inspection will focus on whether the lender violated any of the regulations under the Foreign Exchange Transactions Act and applied anti-money laundering tactics sufficiently.
A more detailed investigation will be conducted into the source of the transactions by the watchdog. Some suggested that suspicious transactions may have been part of crypto-related money laundering . According to Woori, no specific evidence has been found to support the argument for now.
“The investigation by the watchdog is expected to be completed as early as the end of next week,” the Woori official said, who added: “As the watchdog launched the investigation on the suspicious foreign exchange transaction, we need to wait and see until the investigative results are shared by the authority.”
Two months ago, an employee of the lender was arrested for allegedly embezzling 61.4 billion won from the lender’s corporate financing division between 2012 and 2018.
South Korean Brokerages Financial Metrics 2021
In March, data revealed that South Korean brokerage firms’ net profit increased sharply last year as a result of higher transaction fees. Based on data from the Financial Supervisory Service, Korea’s financial regulator, 58 brokerage firms reported combined net profits of 9.09 trillion won ($7.5 billion) last year, which is an increase of 54.2% over the previous year.
According to the data, transaction fees grew by 23.2% on-year to 16.8 trillion won last year. Likewise, earnings from investment banking fees increased by 31.9% on-year to 5.19 trillion won.
