In major crypto news yesterday, the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission) in the US filed a lawsuit against leading crypto exchange Binance, its CEO, Changpeng Zhao (often known as CZ), and its Chief Compliance Officer, Samuel Lim.
The violations the CFTC is charging Binance with include six counts, with the CFTC’s Chief Counsel, Gretchen Lowe, citing “wilful evasion of US law”, and claiming that “Binance’s compliance efforts have been a sham and Binance deliberately chose – over and over – to place profits over following the law.”
However, this summary alone doesn’t capture the colorful nature of the details given about alleged wrongdoing at Binance, which at times veers past brazenness, through an almost total disregard for regulatory compliance, and into darkly absurd territory.
Allegations
The CFTC has been able to access a trove of Binance internal communications and chats, providing a no-holds-barred insight into not only alleged violations but also into the mindset of the participants.
At times, this actually provides some humorous moments, as, for example, when we are told that Lim engaged a compliance auditor who would “just do a half-assed individual sub audit on geo[fencing]” to “buy us more time,” but then,
“As part of this audit, the Binance employee who held the title of Money Laundering Reporting Officer (“MLRO”) lamented that she…
