The Shanghai Baoshan Procuratorate prosecuted an illegal foreign exchange case involving virtual currency amounting to 220 million yuan.

The Baoshan District People's Procuratorate in Shanghai has brought a public prosecution against a case of using virtual currency for illegal foreign exchange settlement for others, where the suspects used overseas accounts to purchase virtual currency in foreign currency and sold it domestically, paying the corresponding amount of RMB to the domestic third-party payment platform account designated by the customer according to the agreed exchange rate, earning the exchange rate difference and service fees in the process. After the case was transferred for review and prosecution, the Baoshan District Procuratorate requested the national foreign exchange management department to make an administrative determination, clarifying that using virtual currency as a trading medium to achieve the monetary value conversion between foreign exchange and RMB, including exchanging RMB for virtual currency, exchanging virtual currency for foreign currency, exchanging foreign currency for virtual currency, and exchanging virtual currency for RMB, constitutes illegal foreign exchange trading. After review, the prosecutor believed that from January 2018 to September 2021, Chen and others built a website and used the method of collecting foreign currency from overseas accounts and paying RMB from domestic accounts to profit from foreign exchange trading, with a total illegal operation amount of RMB 220 million.