Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance, has Rejected a Report Alleging Money Laundering

On Tuesday, Binance CEO, Changpeng Zhao (CZ), denied a Reuters report that the exchange facilitated $2.35 billion in unlawful trades. CZ has published over 50 pages of email correspondence between Binance’s cybersecurity team and Reuters, which he thinks 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 the North Korean hacker organization Lazarus, illegal drug sales on the darknet market Hydra, and investment fraud. Reuters also questioned Binance’s decision to allow Monero trading on its platform despite law enforcement warnings that Monero may be used to launder money.

Furthermore, the news organization said that the probe is backed up by blockchain data, court records, and comments from law enforcement. The email exchanges, on the other hand, reveal that Reuters and Binance are unable to reach an agreement on the charges.

Binance claims that Reuters journalists refused to interview two top detectives who worked on the Lazarus and Hydra case files, Tigran Gambaryan and Matt Price. Binance’s cyber-forensics team is now led by Gambaryan and Price.

Furthermore, the news source refused to allow Binance to examine the UID and wallet data on investment frauds. Binance argues that many technological companies provide encryption on their smartphones and messaging services due to a legitimate right to privacy in the case of Monero.

The SEC is Keeping an Eye on Binance

Meanwhile, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is looking into whether Binance committed securities laws during its BNB token’s 2017 initial coin offering (ICO). The Securities and Exchange Commission has declared that most cryptocurrencies are securities and has started lawsuits against a number of ICO operations. In reality, in 2019, Binance altered the wording of the BNB white paper to avoid being misinterpreted as a security.