Lee Bok-hyun "Establishment of a Task Force to Crack Down on Illegal Activities of Pseudo-Investment Advisory Firms"

The Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) announced that it will actively respond by establishing an exclusive task force to crack down on illegal activities by quasi-investment advisory firms.

On the morning of the 16th, Director Lee Bok-hyun held an executive meeting and stated, "Although the FSS has continuously made efforts such as ex officio cancellations to prevent investor damage caused by quasi-investment advisory firms, the harm still persists as these firms exploit the heightened anxiety due to increased financial market volatility by luring investors through social network services (SNS) and YouTube with promises of high returns, or by engaging in unfair trading." He added, "Illegal activities by quasi-investment advisory firms directly cause financial losses to the public and disrupt the capital market, undermining the foundation of financial order. Therefore, we must actively respond to this issue."

[Image source=Yonhap News]

To this end, the FSS plans to establish a dedicated organization within the agency, tentatively named the Task Force for Crackdown on Illegal Activities by Quasi-Investment Advisory Firms, to actively collect clues of illegal activities by operating concentrated reporting periods and promoting reporting and tips. The task force will promptly begin undercover and comprehensive inspections, notify investigative agencies upon detecting suspicious illegal firms, and immediately initiate investigations if unfair trading allegations are confirmed.

Furthermore, in light of this week's sharp market decline, Director Lee urged reviewing matters related to investigations of unfair trading in the capital market to enhance investor confidence.

Director Lee instructed to strengthen the FSS’s online and offline market information collection and analysis capabilities, expand personnel, reexamine the organization and functions related to unfair trading investigations from the ground up, and to cooperate organically with the Financial Services Commission and investigative agencies for swift crackdown and punishment of unfair trading.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.