The US Department of Justice (DOJ) is investigating cryptocurrency exchange Binance to find out whether the platform offered Russians methods to avoid, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
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The sources say the investigation is a separate case in addition to an existing inquiry by the criminal division. Despite the report, Binance wasn't publicly accused of any wrongdoing. A spokesperson for Binance said the platform's policy "imposes a zero-tolerance approach to double registrations, anonymous identities, and obscure sources of money."
In March 2023, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) filed a lawsuit against Binance and its founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ), saying the trading platform offered unregistered products to US customers without proper registration.
The financial regulator wrote in a complaint against Binance the exchange "no later than July 2019" offered under CZ's direction a facility for the trading of futures, options, swaps involving crypto "that are commodities" including bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH), and litecoin (LTC) for clients in the US.
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