Woori Bank
Korean regulators investigate banks over $6.5B tied to Kimchi premium
South Korean banks are being investigated for their role in facilitating $6.5 billion in suspicious overseas remittances which have been tied to companies arbitraging cryptocurrency. According to an Aug. 15 report from Asia Times, the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) ordered an investigation into South Korean banks last month after identifying a significant amount of overseas remittance transactions at the end of June. The investigation found that a majority of the $6.5 billion remitted overseas between Jan 2021 and Jun 2022 came from crypto exchange accounts before being sent out of the country, suggesting some Korean companies are exploiting the “Kimchi premium (kimp).” The Kimchi premium is the gap in cryptocurrency prices in South Korean exchanges compared to forei...
Major banks moved vast sums of illicit money – investigation
Massive sums of allegedly dirty money have flowed for years through some of the world’s largest banking institutions, said an international journalism investigation published Sunday, which denounced shortcomings in sector regulations. “Profits from deadly drug wars, fortunes embezzled from developing countries, and hard-earned savings stolen in a Ponzi scheme were all allowed to flow into and out of these financial institutions, despite warnings from the banks’ own employees,” according to the probe from Buzzfeed News and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). The investigation, which was led by 108 international media outlets from 88 different countries, is based on thousands of suspicious activity reports (SARs) submitted to the US Treasury Department’s financi...
