Thailand’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has filed a criminal complaint against Bitkub Online and two of its former directors, alleging that the exchange gave false financial reports to regulators for months after a major 2021 hack.
The Bitkub SEC complaint was lodged with the Economic Crime Suppression Division on July 23, and centres on a cyberattack the company is accused of concealing for nearly five years.
The incident dates back to May 10, 2021, at the height of the global crypto boom, when a cyberattack hit Bitkub’s digital asset exchange. Attackers withdrew 16 cryptocurrencies from the platform, including customer holdings, with combined losses of around 1.7 billion baht.
According to the company, the breach was never disclosed to customers or to regulators at the time. Instead, the co-founders reportedly used personal funds to buy back the missing coins, fully replenishing the exchange’s holdings by October 31, 2021.
What the SEC found
The case turns on Bitkub’s daily net capital reports, known as Form DA 1, which digital asset operators must submit to the SEC every day to show their true financial position.
The regulator says its review of the forms filed between May 10 and October 30, 2021, found no reflection of the losses from the hack, even though 1.7 billion baht had gone missing from the platform.
On July 23, the SEC filed its complaint naming Bitkub Online Co., Ltd., along with former directors Sakolkorn Sakavee and Thaweesap Rawan, who were responsible for submitting the reports at the time.
The company faces an allegation of giving false statements to a state authority under Section 76 of the Emergency Decree on Digital Asset Businesses B.E. 2561 (2018).
The two former directors face an additional allegation under Section 88(2) of making false entries in a juristic person’s documents to deceive others, which carries a criminal penalty.
Bitkub’s response
In a statement issued after news of the complaint broke, Bitkub said the person responsible for disclosure at the time chose not to report the theft because of fears of a “bank run”, in which panicked customers might rush to withdraw assets simultaneously.
The company said this could have left it unable to replace the missing assets in time and risked wider damage to Thailand’s then-nascent crypto industry.
Bitkub maintained that all customer assets remained fully intact, adding that the SEC had inspected and confirmed this on September 8, 2025.
The company said it reported the hack to police at the time it occurred, and has since upgraded its security systems, which it says now rank in the top 20 globally according to CER.live. It has also partnered with custody providers BitGo and Coinbase Custody.
Co-founder’s statement
On the evening the complaint became public, Bitkub co-founder Sakolkorn Sakavee posted a video to his personal Facebook account in which he said he, as the director with signing authority at the time, had altered and signed the DA 1 reports to conceal the hack from the public and from regulators.
In the video, Sakolkorn apologised to those affected, saying the delay was, in his view, the only way to prevent a wider crisis, and that he had used his own money to cover the losses so no customer was affected.
He said the decision to alter the documents was his alone, and that no other director or employee was aware of it. He added that he has since resigned from all positions connected to the company and would cooperate with the SEC’s ongoing effort to identify the hacker.
The case now moves to investigation by the Economic Crime Suppression Division, before prosecutors decide whether to pursue charges, with any final ruling to be made by a court.
Whatever the outcome, the case is being seen in Thailand’s crypto sector as a signal that regulatory compliance is judged not only on cybersecurity but also on accurate reporting to the state, even where customer losses are ultimately covered.
The SEC has urged investors to use only licensed digital asset operators, and to report suspected wrongdoing to its complaints hotline on 1207.
The story Bitkub SEC complaint follows five-year hack cover-up as seen on Thaiger News.
