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Reuters: Binance controlled accounts of its independent U.S. subsidiary

As reported by Reuters news agency, citing sources familiar with the situation, Binance controlled five bank accounts belonging to an allegedly independent branch of the cryptocurrency exchange in the United States.

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A top executive and close associate of Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, Guangying Chen, managed these accounts in 2019 and 2020. This allowed Chen and her team to move funds held in bank accounts. One of these accounts held funds of U.S. customers.

This suggests that Binance exercised tight control over Binance.US, even though both companies claimed that they had always operated independently. However, Binance.US denies that Binance ever managed the bank accounts of the exchange’s U.S. division;

In April, Binance’s head of legal affairs, Krishna Juvvadi, told Reuters that Binance.US’s operator, BAM Trading, has had “exclusive control” since it was founded in 2019. However, Binance.US spokesman Christian Hertenstein later said that since 2021, “no one but Binance.US officials had control or access to Binance.US accounts.”

Yesterday, June 5, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accused Binance and its founder of creating a “deceptive network,” inflating trading volume, diverting customer assets and trading in unregistered securities. The SEC lists Solana (SOL), Cardano (ADA), Polygon (MATIC), Coti (COTI), Algorand (ALGO), Filecoin (FIL), Cosmos (ATOM), Sandbox (SAND), Axie infinity (AXS) and Decentraland (MANA) among the latter.

It was recently reported that Binance is considering appointing a new person to head the crypto-exchange. According to Bloomberg, Changpeng Zhao may be succeeded by Richard Teng, the current head of Binance in Asia, Europe and the Middle East.