According to recent reports, U.S. federal prosecutors have asked the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance to simply provide extensive internal records concerning its anti-money laundering checks, along with communications involving its chief founder and executive Changpeng Zhao.
In addition to this, the Justice Department’s section for money laundering asked Binance to voluntarily hand over messages from Zhao as well as 12 other executives and partners on matters including the exchange’s detection of illegal recruitment and transactions of customers in the United States.
Not just that, it is also said to seek any company records with instructions stating, “documents be destroyed, altered, or removed from Binance’s files” or “transferred from the United States.”
On a similar note, Binance is known to have been under the radar of U.S. authorities for quite some time now, with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission looking at allegations of insider trading and market manipulation by the crypto exchange. Moreover, in a tweet, CZ said that his, “chat messages are semi-public anyway.”
“As has been well documented, regulators across the globe are reaching out to every major crypto exchange to better understand our industry. This is a standard process for any regulated organization and we work with agencies regularly to address any outstanding questions,” a Binance spokesperson said.
As noted in a report by gadgets now, the December 20020 request, which has not been previously reported, was part of a Justice Department investigation into Binance’s compliance with U.S. financial crime laws that remains ongoing, four people familiar with the inquiry said.
U.S. authorities, the people said, are investigating whether Binance violated the Bank Secrecy Act. This requires crypto exchanges to register with the Treasury Department and comply with anti-money laundering requirements if they conduct “substantial” business in the United States. The law, designed to protect the U.S. financial system from illicit finance, provides for jail terms of up to 10 years, they added.
Reading so far, I hope you must have gotten a fair insight into the U.S. sought records on Binance CEO for crypto money laundering probe, and by now I believe you will be able to decide on your own whether or not you think it was the right thing to do and what do you think will be their next step!
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