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Reuters: U.S. Justice Dept is split over charging Binance

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https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/us-justice-dept-is-split-over-charging-binance-crypto-world-falters-sources-2022-12-12/
 
December 12, 2022 at 7:38 AM EST
Last Updated 27 min ago
 
Exclusive: U.S. Justice Dept is split over charging Binance as crypto world falters, sources say
 
By Angus Berwick, Dan Levine and Tom Wilson
 
Summary
 
• Some DOJ prosecutors believe evidence justifies filing charges against executives including CEO Zhao
   
• DOJ officials have discussed possible plea deals with Binance's attorneys
 
• Binance is under investigation for possible money laundering and criminal sanctions violations
   
• Binance says it has no insight into the "inner workings of the US Justice Department"
 
WASHINGTON, Dec 12 (Reuters) - Splits between U.S. Department of Justice prosecutors are delaying the conclusion of a long-running criminal investigation into the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance, four people familiar with the matter have told Reuters.
 
The investigation began in 2018 and is focused on Binance's compliance with U.S. anti-money laundering laws and sanctions, these people said. Some of the at least half dozen federal prosecutors involved in the case believe the evidence already gathered justifies moving aggressively against the exchange and filing criminal charges against individual executives including founder Changpeng Zhao, said two of the sources. Others have argued taking time to review more evidence, the sources said.
 
The inquiry involves prosecutors at three Justice Department offices: the Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section, known as MLARS, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Washington in Seattle and the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team. Justice Department regulations say that money laundering charges against a financial institution must be approved by the MLARS chief. Leaders from the other two offices, along with higher-level DOJ officials, would likely also have to sign off on any action against Binance, three of the sources said.
 
Through interviews with almost a dozen people familiar with the case, including current and former U.S. law enforcement officials and ex-Binance advisors, along with a review of company records, Reuters has pieced together the most comprehensive account so far of how the investigation developed and how Binance has sought to keep it at bay. Prosecutors' deliberations on charging Binance have not been previously reported.
 
The stakes are high for the deeply troubled crypto sector. If the investigation goes against Binance and Zhao, it could loosen Binance's grip on the industry. Its hold has been strengthened by the recent collapse of rival exchange FTX.
 
Binance's defense attorneys at U.S. law firm Gibson Dunn have held meetings in recent months with Justice Department officials, the four people said. Among Binance's arguments: A criminal prosecution would wreak havoc on a crypto market already in a prolonged downturn. The discussions included potential plea deals, according to three of the sources.
 
A Binance spokesperson said, "We don't have any insight into the inner workings of the US Justice Department, nor would it be appropriate for us to comment if we did." The Justice Department declined to comment.
 
The charges under investigation are unlicensed money transmission, money laundering conspiracy and criminal sanctions violations, the four people said. No final charging decisions have been made, though prosecutors consider Zhao and some other executives to be subjects of the investigation, one source familiar with the situation said. Ultimately, the Justice Department could bring indictments against Binance and its executives, negotiate a settlement, or close the case without taking any action at all.
 
Little has been revealed about the case. Reuters reported previously that in 2020, prosecutors requested extensive internal records from Binance about its anti-money laundering checks, along with communications involving Zhao and other executives.
 
The new reporting shows that the case has shadowed Binance for most of its five years in existence, shaping Zhao's management of the company while he drove its explosive growth around the world. He instigated a recruitment spree last year that led to the hiring of officials from the Internal Revenue Service's Criminal Investigation division, the U.S. government agency that was investigating Binance. He enforced strict secrecy rules on employees, telling them to use email as little as possible and to communicate using encrypted messaging services, according to company messages that Reuters has previously reported.
 
Reuters has investigated Binance's financial crime compliance over the course of 2022. The reporting showed that Binance kept weak anti-money laundering controls, processed over $10 billion in payments for criminals and companies seeking to evade U.S. sanctions, and plotted to evade regulators in the United States and elsewhere.
 
Binance has disputed the articles, calling the illicit-fund calculations inaccurate and the descriptions of its compliance controls "outdated." The exchange has said it is "driving higher industry standards" and seeking to "further improve our ability to detect illegal crypto activity on our platform."
 
Launched by Zhao in Shanghai in 2017, Binance now dominates the crypto industry. The exchange processed trades worth around $1.6 trillion in October, about half of the entire crypto market's trading volume. That sum dwarfed its former challenger FTX, which handled $230 billion in trades that month, according to data site CryptoCompare.
 
FTX imploded in early November, triggering a wave of public demands for greater regulation of the cryptocurrency industry. Founder Sam Bankman-Fried had boasted his exchange was the "most regulated," but he based it in the Bahamas, where oversight was light, and secretly used customer deposits. The Justice Department has opened an investigation into FTX's handling of company funds, Reuters has reported. In a bankruptcy hearing, attorneys for FTX said the exchange was run as a "personal fiefdom" of Bankman-Fried. Bankman-Fried says he didn't knowingly commit any wrongdoing.
 
Sources familiar with Justice Department operations said it is as yet unclear whether this new probe will add impetus to the investigation into Binance or slow it down.
 
Zhao, who declines to disclose the location or entity behind his own exchange, accelerated his rival's fall by announcing that Binance would sell its holding of FTX's digital token. This sparked a surge of user withdrawals, ultimately forcing FTX to file for bankruptcy.
 
In a blog post several days later, Zhao wrote that Binance "must lead by example" going forward. "We cannot let a few bad actors sully the reputation of this industry," he wrote.
 
"LAWYER UP"
 
Prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Seattle began investigating Binance in 2018, following a wave of cases that saw criminals use Binance to move illicit funds, the four people familiar with the probe said.
 
The Seattle office partnered with MLARS to pursue the case, along with agents from the IRS Criminal Investigation division.
 
Binance began to address the chances of U.S. enforcement action that year. A summary of a company meeting in October 2018, attended by Zhao, said, "Lawyer up in the US, address regulatory risks."
 
The U.S. Bank Secrecy Act, designed to protect the U.S. financial system from illicit finance, requires crypto exchanges to register with the Treasury Department and comply with anti-money laundering requirements if they conduct "substantial" business in the United States. Binance has never done so, despite almost a third of its users being U.S.-based the year of its launch, according to a company blog post.
 
Instead, Zhao approved a proposal from a person providing advice to Binance to "insulate" Binance from U.S. scrutiny by setting up a new American exchange that would draw regulators' attention away from the main platform, as reported by Reuters in October. Zhao became concerned about U.S. authorities gaining access to Binance's internal records, company messages show.
 
A guide issued to employees for one encrypted messaging service listed its "automatic self-erasing messages" as a benefit.
 
Until 2020, Binance's legal department operated on bare bones. Its head of legal, Jared Gross, was a former mergers and acquisitions lawyer with little experience in dealing with authorities, according to two people who worked with him. Faced with the Justice Department investigation, Binance hired an external lawyer from U.S. law firm Paul Weiss, Roberto Gonzalez, who was previously Treasury's deputy general counsel. Gross, who left Binance last year, did not respond to messages and phone calls. Gonzalez and Paul Weiss didn't comment.