On Tuesday, Binance’s CEO, Changpeng Zhao (CZ), denied a Reuters report that the exchange facilitated $2.35 billion in illegal trades. CZ has published more than 50 pages of email correspondence between Binance’s cybersecurity team and Reuters, which they believe contradicts the Reuters report.
According to Reuters, between 2017 and 2022, Binance’s weak anti-money laundering checks and KYC requirements resulted in $2.35 billion in money laundering from North Korean hacker organization Lazarus, illegal drug sales and investment fraud on the darknet market Hydra. Reuters also questioned Binance’s decision to allow Monero to trade on its platform despite law enforcement warnings that Monero could be used to launder money.
Furthermore, the news organization said that the investigation is supported by blockchain data, court records and comments from law enforcement. Email exchanges, on the other hand, show that Reuters and Binance have been unable to reach an agreement on the allegations.
Binance claims that Reuters journalists refused to interview Tigran Gambarian and Matt Price, two top detectives working on the Lazarus and Hydra case files. Binance’s cyber-forensics team is now led by Gambaryan and Price.
Furthermore, the news source refused to allow Binance to investigate UID and wallet data on investment fraud. Binance argues that the legitimate right to privacy in the case of Monero has led to many tech companies providing encryption on their smartphones and messaging services.
The SEC is keeping an eye on Binance
Meanwhile, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is looking into whether Binance passed securities laws during its BNB token 2017 initial coin offering (ICO). The Securities and Exchange Commission has announced that most cryptocurrencies are securities and has started lawsuits against several ICO operations. In fact, in 2019, Binance changed the wording of the BNB white paper to avoid being misinterpreted as a security.
