Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, its CEO Changpeng Zhao and chief compliance officer Samuel Lim are being sued by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, according to Monday’s filing.
The company, Zhao and Lim, have been sued for violating trading and derivatives rules.
The exchange has never registered with the CFTC in any capacity and has “ignored federal laws” regarding the U.S. financial markets, including, among other things, laws implementing controls to prevent and detect money laundering and terrorist financing. Yes,” the application states.
By May 2021, Binance’s monthly revenue increased from $63 million in August 2020 to $1.14 billion from derivatives trading, the agency noted. Of that amount, about 16% of Binance accounts were held by US customers.
Zhao and other officials in Binance’s senior management said, “We failed to properly oversee Binance’s activities and, in fact, had customers located in the United States to circumvent the compliance controls Binance claims to have in place. actively facilitated violations of U.S. law, including assisting and directing the prevention and detection of violations of U.S. law,” the filing added.
Binance did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment at the time of article publication.
This is a developing story.
