Binance was slapped with a $4.3 billion fine because it let groups like Hamas and ISIS receive funds: Treasury Department::“Can barely buy an AK-47 with 600 bucks,” a Binance compliance staffer told his boss in 2019, per regulators.
There’s just no way the US dollar could ever possibly be used that way. 🙄
Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, the cofounder of Binance and a central figure in the crypto world, is also stepping down as CEO under the settlement.
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Zhao is pleading guilty to breaking anti money-laundering law, per the justice department. Zhao will personally pay $50 million in fines, and faces up to 18 months in prison,
Man I feel like he’s getting off light honestly and I saw there are more charges from the SEC but how is he the only one facing time?
I love how just a year ago, he was the one to call out FTX.
People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones and all that…
The whole industry seems like a criminal plot at this point.
Binance has no problem with its clients. FTX literally invested the money of the people in high risk assets, and they ended up bankrupted.
In the day of the Binance’s trial, people withdraw more than billion of dollars worth Cryptos. Binance didn’t end up bankrupt as they are holding A LOT.
We only know ftx was stealing due to a run on the exchange. Binance could also easily be in the same boat, we just don’t know, as they have not been tested for there liquidity. Also it turns out ftx pretty much had the money, but it just was not liquid.
Βinance has shared publicly many of its wallets in many Blockchains.
FTX was a scam, they literally stole from their clients. The only failure of Binance is they failed to reject certain clients certain governments asked them to reject
I doubt he’ll get time. Rich people don’t go to jail. Well, he’s Chinese so maybe.
The US government pretending that they aren’t going to make money as a result of this…
I first read Beyonce, and I was both confused and impressed by her troublemaking and net worth
They should use a portion of these funds to setup specific task forces to dig deeper into the company and provide oversight indefinitely. $4.3B is a lot of money, you could fund an agency forever and still have change.
laughs in less than two weeks of pentagon funding
For what it’s worth I agree with you, but the money we spend on many agencies is wild
Haha yes, the Pentagon has probably “lost” more money than the totality of all fines.
It’s just an idea I had, rather than directly spending out of a budget it would be a way to be self sustaining. If there is no wrongdoing then by its nature the funding would dry up and be self-cancelling. On the other hand it could generate further revenue if allowed to continue investigating.
The problem is that the auditors will ALWAYS find wrongdoing, even if it doesn’t exist. If their funding (and therefore their jobs) depend on fines on offending organizations, then everyone is getting found to be fraudulent
That’s definitely a real problem that would need to be considered. I’m sure it has been in great length. My gut feeling says it’s workable though and the problem being more political than technical.
I’m in full agreement. Crypto was touted as this “untraceable currency” and, surprise, it became used for nefarious means. We need more regulation on this stuff, not less, because as much as the “everyday joe” who got into crypto “because his nephew taught him about it” doesn’t want the government spying on him, really it’s massive fund transfers and money laundering for bad actors that it seems to benefit the most.
Especially once you’ve been found or pleaded guilty. If a person commits a crime of this magnitude and they go to jail, they would have probation upon release. Maybe there should be some kind of corporate probation policy? Not something up for negotiation.
Implying they do this for truth and justice. US just doesn’t want anyone to eat their cake.
4.3B doesn’t last as long as you think, especially once you need to staff 100’s of people, the equipment and tech they need to work, office building(s) for them. Especially if you put that office and staff on either coast. They’ll burn that in 3 years tops
Would they need all those resources dedicated to just one company? I feel like they wouldn’t have spent anywhere near $4.3B. Considering the investigation was started in 2021 so let’s say 2 years or $3B. It seems extremely unlikely and even more than 1 order of magnitude off.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Binance on Tuesday reached a settlement with US regulators — including the justice and treasury departments — to pay $4.3 billion in fines for violating anti-money laundering and sanctions laws.
The treasury department said Binance failed to report over 100,000 suspicious transactions involving terrorist groups, ransomware, child sexual exploitation material, and scams.
The Hamas transactions were acknowledged in February 2019 by Binance’s chief compliance officer at the time, Samuel Lim, according to a Commodity Futures Trading Commission lawsuit filed in March against the crypto exchange.
On top of Tuesday’s settlement, which also resolves the March CFTC complaint, Zhao is pleading guilty to breaking anti money-laundering law, per the justice department.
“Binance grew at an extremely fast pace globally, in a new and evolving industry that was in the early stages of regulation, and Binanace made misguided decisions along the way,” the blog said.
Yesha Yadav, a law professor at Vanderbilt University, told Reuters that the deal “looks designed to give Binance the chance to live another day, while removing CZ, a figurehead who has been so intrinsically linked to the growth of a business model.”
The original article contains 551 words, the summary contains 185 words. Saved 66%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
I traded on Binance back when they let anyone on. It was wild you could just deposit your crypto and go nuts. No docs needed and limits were very high before any type of verification kicked in so I’m not surprised it was abused.
That’s the way currency exchange should be
Yeah I don’t get it how people are so keen on sacrificing their freedoms for boogeymen. Surely there are other ways to prevent money laundering without fucking up the whole user experience and literally locking out big chunk of population because their missing a minor KYC detail.
