Binance Is Under Siege In Europe After The SEC Attack
For some time, the SEC has been requesting information on Binance’s actions from many European nation-states and a number of them have been prompted to act after the exchange was indicted and accused of commingling money earlier this month.
Several European agencies are currently examining the complexities of Binance’s case and have yet to respond to the SEC’s disclosure demands.
On June 5, the SEC filed a lawsuit against Binance, its CEO and founder, Changpeng Zhao, and Binance.
The agency in the United States claims that Binance artificially inflates its trading volumes, diverts client money, fails to prohibit U.S. customers from its platform, and misleads investors about its market surveillance procedures.
As a US district court signed off on a consent decree issued Saturday, Binance and the SEC struck an arrangement to avert a complete asset freeze of the platform in the US and retain customer funds in the US.
The accord came as the SEC launched a broad, continuing complaint accusing the business of operating an unlawful securities exchange, which could take months, if not years, to settle.
Binance has dozens, if not hundreds, of businesses registered worldwide, many of them in Europe. Aside from holding a license to operate as a cryptocurrency exchange in France and Cyprus, as well as in Spain via its subsidiary MoonPay, it has or has additional firms registered in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Malta, and a number of other EU nations.
The majority of firms incorporated in these nations recorded minor amounts of income ranging from a few thousand Euros to €500,000, although others declared as much as €200 million each year.
Several companies have even received loans from the enigmatic Guangying Chen, a corporate stakeholder. The substantial stacking and dispersion of information across many nations seem to be meant to make Binance’s activities opaque and difficult to comprehend.
Guangying Chen is the only and sole stakeholder of many Binance registered firms in Europe, although CZ is seldom, if ever, the expressly proclaimed owner. Chen has a Chinese passport and a registered residence in Singapore, but the exchange says he also has a European passport and resides in Europe.
Binance has faced difficulties in two European countries after announcing intentions to leave the Netherlands and becoming the subject of a probe by French authorities.
CZ maintains that recent French police inspections of Binance’s headquarters in the nation were regular. But, according to the French daily Le Monde, the exchange has been under investigation by French authorities since February 2022 for serious money laundering violations in its own investing operation and by its own customers. Binance is also relinquishing its Cyprus crypto exchange license.
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