The Taiwan Financial Supervisory Commission launched a special financial inspection of virtual currency operators at the end of 2023 and found that the "ACE Ace Exchange", which was exposed to fraud in January this year, violated the provisions of the "Money Laundering Prevention Act" and the "Personal Data Protection Act", and decided to issue new fines NT$1.52 million, the first time a financial inspection virtual currency operator has been fined.
The Securities and Futures Bureau of the Financial Supervisory Commission announced on July 18 that after a financial inspection on the prevention of money laundering and combating terrorist financing operations, "ACE Digital Innovation Co., Ltd. (ACE Ace Exchange)" had a total of four major internal control deficiencies.
First of all, ACE Ace Exchange "failed to implement enhanced review measures for high-risk customers", "failed to fully understand the purpose and nature of establishing business relationships", "failed to fully identify and verify the identity of customers", and "failed to accurately identify the nature of corporate customers" "Beneficiary" and "failure to carefully assess the need to increase the customer's risk level".
Secondly, the exchange's deficiencies in transaction monitoring include "failure to set different monitoring thresholds according to the customer's money laundering risk level", "failure to accurately record the processing status of suspicious transaction alerts and the handling of suspicious transaction alerts triggered by the same customer." "investigation record" and "failure to truly understand the source and whereabouts of customer funds."
Third, ACE Ace Exchange also “failed to fully retain the wallet address information of external senders that handle virtual asset transfers for customers, and records of transactions and transactions with customers,” and it also failed to provide the information when conducting inspections by the Financial Supervisory Commission. The situation of virtual asset transfer data.
In addition, the Financial Supervisory Commission also found that ACE Ace Exchange retained "customer personal information in external company systems" without appropriate security measures.
In response to the above four deficiencies, the Financial Supervisory Commission has determined in accordance with Article 5, Item 2, Article 6, Item 5, Article 7, Item 5, Article 8, Item 4 of the Money Laundering Prevention Act and Article 8, Item 4 of the Personal Data Protection Act. Item 2 of Article 48 stipulates that ACE Exchange shall be fined NT$1.52 million.
The Financial Supervisory Commission's 2024 financial inspection officially added the "Virtual Asset Platform and Transaction Business" (VASP) inspection industry, which means that virtual asset platforms will be subject to "continuous inspections", focusing on whether the industry has actually implemented money laundering prevention regulations.
"The Financial Supervisory Commission fined "ACE Exchange" 1.52 million yuan for insufficient customer review, transaction monitoring, and record keeping. This article was first published on "Block Guest".
