The world’s largest bitcoin and cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, is collaborating with US authorities in investigations against money laundering and alleged tax crimes.
This was stated by Changpeng Zhao, CEO of the company, this Thursday, May 13. The publication of CZ, as it is popularly known in the cryptocurrency ecosystem, emerged in response to the news that Binance would allegedly be the subject of such inquiries.
Zhao referred to the title of a Bloomberg post, according to which Binance “faces” investigations for money laundering and tax crimes in the United States. The executive assured that “the title” of the news is wrong, although the content does expose the company’s collaboration with US agencies in their inquiries.
It describes how we collaborate with law enforcement agencies to fight bad actors, but somehow made it seem like a bad thing.
Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance .
Specifically, the Department of Justice and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS ) of the United States would be behind the investigations to the exchange, according to the same media. According to the publication, anonymous sources with knowledge of the situation on Binance corroborated the investigation. However, they alleged that both institutions refused to comment on the matter.
Although Zhao denies that the investigation accuses his company of any crime related to money laundering or evasion fiscal, it is known that the platform has been used for these purposes in the past. At the beginning of this year, a cybersecurity report reviewed in CriptoNoticias established that a large part of Bitcoins perceived by criminals operating the ransomware Ryuk were laundered on Binance and the Huobi exchange.
Binance in other research
Binance has been closely linked to various investigations and speculations about its businesses recently , this newspaper has reported. In March of this year, it was announced that the company was under the scrutiny of US authorities for allegedly providing unauthorized services in the North American country.
Although it was not known for sure, The investigation could be taking into account an alleged document leaked last November, where Zhao urged the use of VPN to browse the Binance website from the US, evading well local controls. The executive denied this alleged strategy to evade US regulations.
Also a few weeks ago Binance was placed under the scrutiny of European authorities, after launching tokens based on shares of companies that can be traded on your platform. Although the matter has not escalated, the German regulator alerted the exchange of a possible fine.
Binance’s position has been to abide by the regulations, to the point of incorporating former executives of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an organization international behind guidelines against privacy in the world of cryptocurrencies.
