Huobi and Fisco Under Japanese Authorities Investigation

It has been reported last week that crypto exchanges Huobi Japan and Fisco have been under investigation by Japan’s financial authorities.

According to “two sources familiar with the matter”, the Financial Services Agency (FSA) paid a visit to the two exchanges in order to evaluate their customer protection and anti-money laundering (AML) measures.

The two Japanese exchanges in question have had major changes in their management level, and the FSA launched an investigation to asses if the adequate compliance measures have been implemented under the new administrations, reported the sources.

Huobi Group extended its trading services to Japan last September by purchasing the licensed cryptocurrency exchange BitTrade.

Fisco has recently purchased the Zaif exchange, which was under the previous management of Tech Bureau. But after the exchange fell victim to a major hack in September, Tech Bureau decided to sell its company to Fisco for the amount of $44.7 million.

Zaif lost in the hack almost $62.5 million worth of bitcoin (BTC), bitcoin cash (BCH) and Monacoin (MONA).

Since the breach, the exchange suspended the registration of new members, and trading, depositing and withdrawing MONA has also been suspended. The official handover of the platform to Fisco happened on Monday and all the services were restarted today.

Japan was the first country to grant bitcoin legal status as a legal payment. Two years ago they also gave a law that issued anti-money laundering (AML)/know-your-customer (KYC) laws for cryptocurrency exchanges and required that all such platform have a license.