A pan-government body has been launched to respond to illegal foreign exchange transactions such as hwanchigi, offshore asset flight, and offshore tax evasion.
The Ministry of Finance and Economy said on the 15th that it launched the Illegal Foreign Exchange Transaction Response Team to strictly respond to acts that disrupt the foreign exchange market and economic order, together with the National Intelligence Service, the National Tax Service, the Korea Customs Service, the Bank of Korea, and the Financial Supervisory Service. The decision reflects the judgment that there are limits to responses by individual agencies as illegal foreign exchange transaction methods become increasingly complex and sophisticated.
The response team was formed to remove silos between agencies and pool each agency's expertise. It focuses on jointly tracking and uncovering illegal cross-border capital flows.
In particular, it plans to concentrate crackdowns on hwanchigi, which involves exchanging payments without going through foreign exchange banks, offshore asset flight through export and import price manipulation and false reporting, and offshore tax evasion and money laundering that exploit foreign exchange transaction procedures.
A government official said, "We expect to eliminate blind spots in enforcement by mutually sharing investigative information and analytical capabilities held by each agency."