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.
Centralization allows for this. If people exchanged crypto peer to peer transaction amounts would be much smaller and no one person or company would have nearly as big of a share as binance. So I will continue to say not your keys, not your coins.
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 stole from customers. Binance didn’t sufficiently spy on its customers. They are not the same.
Crypto is rotten to the core.
I doubt he’ll get time. Rich people don’t go to jail. Well, he’s Chinese so maybe.
How do those companies pay these gigantic fine? $4 billion wire transfer? Does the bank even allow wiring that huge amount of money? Monthly Installment? Trucks carrying palettes of money?
The balance is kept at a bank and the banks have ledgers with the reserve bank who in turn adds $40B to the asset column and negates $40B from the liabilities column. That’s the basic version. Nothing changes hands per se. It’s just 1s and 0s on a computer.
My bank only allows like $2 million dollars online wire transfer per day on their corporate account. Transferring billions would probably requires you to meet with your bank’s account manager?
I’m unsure if the details of that process are public but presumably it is possible through coordination with the bank, the treasury department, or both. What I could find publicly was that CZ’s personal fine of $70m is payable either by ETF, cashier’s check or money order.
EDIT: This rabbit hole also led me to find out that this year, British American Tobacco has a $500m fine for violating some Weapons of Mass Destruction regulation. It sounds horrifying but they basically sold equipment to make cigarettes to the DPRK and tried to hide it. It’s confronting seeing proof how blatantly corporations act. There was actual people who decided to do this.
They hand over their chest full of gold coins and jewels.
The US government pretending that they aren’t going to make money as a result of this…
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.
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.
Implying they do this for truth and justice. US just doesn’t want anyone to eat their cake.
