The Ministry of Finance and the State Securities Commission (SSC) have just announced a draft Decree amending and supplementing a number of articles of the Decrees related to administrative sanctions in the field of securities. Notably, for the first time, violations related to cryptocurrency assets have been included in the penalty framework, with fines of up to billions of VND.
According to the Ministry of Finance, this is a necessary step to implement the Government's Resolution on piloting the cryptocurrency asset market in Vietnam, while overcoming legal gaps when there are currently no specific regulations on penalties for violations related to this asset class. Vietnam is currently among the three countries with the highest number of people participating in cryptocurrency asset trading in the world, however, most of the activities are still unofficial, posing many potential risks.
The draft adds one section and 5 new articles specifically regulating administrative violations in cryptographic asset activities, including: Providing services, organizing trading markets, reporting and disclosing information as well as illegal trading activities.
In particular, the Ministry of Finance provides a detailed definition and description of behavior of manipulation of the cryptocurrency asset market. There are 5 groups of acts listed as manipulation, including: Creating fake supply through continuous transactions between linked accounts; colluding to buy and sell without changing ownership rights; luring and colluding to place orders to affect prices; statements that disrupt the market after holding positions; and spreading false information to create fake supply and demand.
The act of using internal information to transact cryptocurrency assets will also be punished if individuals or organizations use un disclosed information that has a great impact on prices to conduct transactions for personal gain or consult others.
The fine for trading in the cryptocurrency asset market is expected to be from 1.5 to 2 billion VND. The organization providing encrypted asset services that violate the law may also be suspended from operation for 3 to 5 months.
Other violations such as not verifying the investor's identity, using false advertising information, not separating customer assets from self-made assets... can also be fined from 300 million to 2 billion VND.
For individual investors, if they do not open an account and transfer encrypted assets to be deposited and transacted at licensed organizations, they may be fined from 100 million to 200 million VND.
Completing the administrative penalty framework is an important stepping stone in the process of building a transparent and strictly controlled cryptocurrency asset market in Vietnam. The Ministry of Finance is continuing to collect opinions to complete the draft before submitting it to the Government for consideration and promulgation.
