Teresa Huang and Jack Hsieh
On July 27, 2021, The Financial Supervisory Commission (“FSC”) promulgated the examples (as the table below) of monitored transactions under Article 12, Paragraph 1, Subparagraph 2 of the “Regulations Governing Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing for Enterprise Handling Virtual Currency Platform and Transaction” (the “Regulation”) under Jin-Guan-Yin-Fa No. 11001396511 Letter. FSC requested that relevant businesses shall choose or develop their own monitoring systems based on the table below, in consideration of its asset scale, geographic distribution, business characteristics, customer targets, transaction characteristics, and internal risk evaluations on money laundering and terrorism in order to better identify transactions that may involve money laundering, terrorism, and armed expansion.
| Customer Identity | (1) The customer is suspected of using an anonymous name, a fake name, fake account, establishing a false legal person or organization, or utilizing false or altered IDs or documents to establish a business relationship. |
| (2) The customer’s IP address is different from their nationality or country/area or registered residency without a reasonable cause. | |
| (3) The customer establishes multiple company or organization trading accounts having the same beneficiary owner without a reasonable cause. | |
| (4) Many different customers’ trading accounts have the same address, phone number, email address, and/or other information but the information of each customer (such as name, age, address, and phone number) have no clear connection. | |
| (5) The customer frequently changes its customer information or refuses to provide documents meant to confirm its identity without a reasonable cause. | |
| (6) Knowing that the customer has been rejected from establishing a business relationship or trading with another virtual currency and transaction platform (the “VASP”) or the customer identity has been terminated. | |
| Transaction | (1) The customer transact large amounts of virtual currency or does so in a short period of time and such actions clearly do not reasonably fit the customer’s identity. |
| (2) A new or inactive account suddenly conducts a large amount of transactions which does not reasonably fit the customer’s identity or has no reasonable cause. | |
| (3) Accounts with the same IP address conduct transactions with multiple unrelated trading accounts with no reasonable cause. | |
| (4) The customer splits a transaction into many small amounts without reasonable cause to avoid identity confirmations for temporary transactions. | |
| (5) The customer immediately transfers or exchanges into a different virtual currency after buying or obtaining some virtual currency, doing so for a certain number of times or with a certain monetary value with no reasonable cause or does not reasonably fit the customer’s identity. | |
| (6) The customer receives many and/or various kinds of virtual currencies in small amounts and proceeds to transfer or sell all of them to obtain fiat currency without reasonable cause. | |
| (7) The customer is involved in major media reports on television, newspapers, magazines, or the internet and has abnormal transactional activity. | |
| (8) A known customer’s IP address, the fiat funding, the source address of the virtual currency, or address of transaction is connected to the dark web, mixing services, virtual currency mixers, other illegal activity, or nations and locations deemed high risk for money laundering or terrorism by the international anti-money laundering organization. | |
| (9) The client or its transaction IP address comes from a nation or location deemed as high risk for money laundering or terrorism by the international anti-money laundering organization and conducts a large number of transactions. | |
| (10) Regardless of the amount of money involved or whether the transaction was completed, when there are clear abnormalities or abnormal transaction and internal process confirms that the transaction is suspected to involve money laundering or terrorism. | |
| (11) When a customer frequently conducts virtual currency transactions or transfers with multiple VASP that do not conform to anti-money laundering regulations or private wallets suspected not to be owned by the customer without reasonable cause and the transactions do not reasonably fit the customer’s identity. (This item applies after Article 7 of the Regulation takes effect). | |
| Terrorism and Armed Expansion | (1) The customer itself or the benefactor is involved with individuals, legal persons, or organizations confirmed or are investigated by foreign governments or international organizations for terrorist activities, or are reasonably suspected to be involved in terrorist activities, terrorist organizations or terrorism. |
| (2) The customer itself or the benefactor is involved with individuals, legal persons, or organizations confirmed or are investigated by foreign governments or international organizations for armed expansion targeted financial sanctions, or are reasonably suspected to be involved in such activities. |
For other relevant information, please refer to the FSC’s announcement on July 27, 2021 linked below: