Upbit executives found not guilty of fraud case

The Seoul Southern District Court acquitted the leaders of the Upbit cryptocurrency exchange and dropped all charges against them.fraud. Earlier, prosecutors accused the site management of market manipulations.

When deciding on this issue, the deputyChief Justice Oh Sang-yong dismissed the fraud and market manipulation charges against Upbit directors for lack of evidence. According to the South Korean publication Newsis, the court said that the actions of the Upbit management did not significantly affect the spot price of BTC.

Previously, prosecutors claimed that Upbit was tradingagainst their customers by creating accounts to manipulate market prices. According to prosecutors, Upbit management created fake purchase orders in order to artificially inflate the trading activity of cryptocurrency pairs.

In December 2018, the three leaders of the largestSouth Korean cryptocurrency exchange Upbit, including its founder Sun Chi-Hyung, has been formally charged with fraud. Then the prosecutors claimed that between September and December 2017, the accused used corporate accounts and carried out fraudulent transactions with the aim of overstating the trading volume by 254 trillion won ($ 226 billion). We also sold 11,550 BTC in the amount of 150 billion won ($ 133 million) through falsified transactions.

In November 2019, Upbit announced the theft of 342,000ETH (about $ 49 million) as a result of a fraudulent transaction from the platform wallet. The Upbit exchange was launched in 2017 as part of a partnership between Dunamu and Bittrex.

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