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| Woori Bank's headquarters in Seoul / Yonhap |
By Lee Min-hyung
Woori Bank has been internally investigating suspicious foreign exchange trades totaling 800 billion won ($624.26 million) at its sales office and has reported the case to the Financial Supervisory Service for further investigation.
The transactions were made through multiple corporate accounts, according to the lender. The sales office in Seoul has been looking into the case for the past year.
"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 said.
Following the report, the financial watchdog launched an on-site inspection into the lender on June 23. The FSS will inspect the case with a focus on whether the lender violated any of the regulations under the Foreign Exchange Transactions Act and sufficiently applied in anti-money laundering tactics.
The watchdog will also investigate the source of the transactions in more detail. Some raised the possibility that suspicious transactions were made as part of crypto-related money laundering activities. Woori, however, denied the possibility, for the time being, saying that no specific evidence has been found to back up the argument.
"The investigation by the watchdog is expected to be completed as early as the end of next week," the Woori official said. The bank pledged to cooperate with the watchdog on the ongoing investigation and take measures after figuring out whether there were any illegal trading acts.
The case erupted about two months after an employee of the lender was arrested for allegedly embezzling 61.4 billion won between 2012 and 2018 on multiple occasions while working at its corporate financing division.
However, the lender underscored that since the embezzlement the current foreign exchange transactions have nothing to do with the scandal. Woori Bank said it has not yet found any evidence of its employees having engaged in any illegal or suspicious acts relating to the recent case.
"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."
Shares of Woori Financial Group Inc. closed with a bigger drop of 2.72 percent on Monday than those of the firm's competitors, due to the report of the suspicious transaction. KB Financial Group shares inched down by 0.2 percent on the same day. Shares of Hana Financial Group fell by 1.24 percent during the same period.
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