Report: Executives flee, prompting transfer of $56M from abandoned exchange

A now-defunct exchange in Hong Kong has initiated the transfer of funds from its wallets to both decentralized and centralized platforms in an alleged attempt to evade Anti-Money Laundering (AML) controls. Blockchain analytics firm Cyvers Alerts reported on February 20th that approximately 24,000 Ether (ETH), valued at $55.6 million, had been moved from Atom Asset (AAX) Exchange wallets since the beginning of this month. Analysts noted that the observed patterns indicate an effort to avoid AML tools, and that some of the funds came from the exchange and have been blacklisted by Tether.
Prior to this discovery, the last recorded transactions involving AAX Exchange wallets occurred in October 2023 and November 2022. AAX was one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in Hong Kong before its collapse, boasting over 2 million users.
On November 13th, 2022, just two days after the bankruptcy filing of crypto exchange FTX, AAX also suspended withdrawals and closed all social media channels due to counterparty risk exposure. “On December 16th, 2022, both its website and app ceased to function,” stated Cyvers. “Initially, AAX attributed the freeze to security measures in response to alleged malicious attacks.”
Following the shutdown, AAX’s former CEO Thor Chan and board member Haoming Liang were arrested by Hong Kong police in 2022. However, the founder of AAX, whose identity remains unknown, is reportedly still at large with 230 million Hong Kong dollars ($29.41 million) of users’ funds and the private keys necessary to access the exchange wallets. As of now, the exchange’s website is offline and its Twitter account has not been updated since November 2022.
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