- Chief Compliance Officer and VP of Legal Affairs, Arrow Electronics
By 
Aaron Nicodemus2023-03-27T21:26:00
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) charged Binance and its founder with operating an illegal digital assets exchange.
The agency’s announcement Monday also included charges against former Binance Chief Compliance Officer Samuel Lim for aiding and abetting the exchange’s alleged violations of the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA) and CFTC regulations. Entities Binance Holdings Limited, Binance Holdings (IE) Limited, and Binance (Services) Holdings Limited were each named in the complaint, along with founder Changpeng Zhao.
The complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, cited a number of violations at Binance, including:
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Federal agencies hit Binance with more than $4.3 billion in penalties and imposed multiple compliance monitorships on the virtual currency exchange as punishment for its repeated and intentional violations of U.S. anti-money laundering laws, sanctions, and other regulations.
The Securities and Exchange Commission charged Binance Holdings, its U.S.-based affiliate BAM Trading Services, and their founder Changpeng Zhao with a series of securities law violations, including operating unregistered exchanges.
A cryptocurrency firm with a chief compliance officer found to not be handling the responsibilities of their role seriously is likely to face additional regulatory scrutiny, as evidenced by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s action against Binance.
A broker-dealer subsidiary of Toronto-based BMO Financial Group will pay nearly $41 million in penalties to the Securities and Exchange Commission to settle allegations that its traders issued misleading disclosures on bonds for three years, causing $19 million in harm to its customers.
A cannabis company agreed to pay $225,000 to settle allegations that funds were temporarily deposited into its year-end accounts for the sole purpose of inflating year-end cash, the Securities and Exchange Commission said.
Vince McMahon, the founder and former CEO of WWE, was fined $400,000 and ordered to reimburse the wrestling giant more than $1.3 million to settle charges brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission that he failed to disclose hush money payments he made on behalf of himself and the company.
