Dunamu, the parent company of South Korea’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Upbit, has taken legal action against the country’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) over a business suspension order. This move comes as South Korean authorities are cracking down on crypto-related crimes and have established a dedicated unit to handle digital asset investigations.
On February 28, Dunamu reportedly filed a lawsuit with the Seoul Administrative Court in an attempt to overturn the FIU’s sanctions. Last November, South Korean regulators accused Upbit of failing to conduct proper customer due diligence in hundreds of thousands of cases. As a result, the FIU prohibited new customers from transferring virtual assets on Upbit between March 7 and June 6.
However, Dunamu is challenging this penalty, arguing that it will have a significant impact on its operations. The company insists that it has implemented necessary compliance measures in response to regulatory concerns and believes that the sanctions imposed by the FIU are disproportionate. Dunamu also claims that the FIU made these sanctions without fully considering key facts and circumstances.
In a parallel development, South Korea’s Seoul Southern District Prosecutors’ Office has launched a specialized Joint Investigation Unit (JIU) to combat cryptocurrency-related crimes. The unit consists of 35 financial regulators and prosecutors from the Financial Services Commission and the Financial Supervisory Service. Their main focus is to investigate and prosecute crypto-related fraud, theft, and illicit market activities.
This initiative was introduced following the success of a temporary task force established in 2023 to address the increasing number of cryptocurrency-related offenses. The complexity of these crimes necessitated the creation of a permanent unit to ensure more effective enforcement. Since the launch of the initial task force, prosecutors have charged 74 individuals and arrested 25 in cases involving fraudulent schemes and market manipulation.
